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bjbj Hello, my name is Valerie Jones, and I am a peer support minister with Be Not Afraid.
Today I want to share my story about my daughter Bethany. She was born on January 22, 2009
and she lived nine months in my womb and she lived only ten minutes outside my womb. What
I want to share with you today is a mother s story. What happens when you have a diagnosis
that there is something wrong with your baby in the womb, and the forces that go against
you in giving this child life. We first found out something was wrong with Bethany after
I was only pregnant for a few weeks. But what you may not know, or you may know, is that
the testing for finding something wrong with a baby is increasing. When I had my second
child the test was at 20 weeks, and now it s at 11 and 1/2 weeks, and the reason that
s so important is that at 11 and 1/2 weeks you don t rea11y even feel the child. And
at 11 and 1/2 weeks they re already putting fear into mothers that there may be something
wrong with their baby. The mothers see genetic counselors and doctors who start giving statistics
of what could be wrong with your child, and that is what I experienced with Bethany, pretty
early on. The question that they pose to a mom with a poor prenatal diagnosis is What
do you want to do? And as a mom you think, What can I do to help my baby? But you learn
through the system that What do you want to do? means, Do you want to keep this baby,
or do you want to end its life with an abortion? But they use terms that are very insidious,
they go around what they are really trying to say. With Bethany, I had gone to one of
the top children s hospitals in the country, trying to find out if there was anything I
could do for her condition. They told me that her condition was pretty bad. And I think
the nurses and the doctors were trying to help me, but they had told me that at 27 weeks
pregnant, while she was kicking inside me, that I could still terminate. With Bethany
still kicking inside me, I fe1t like she was saying, Mom, protect me! Protect me from these
forces that want to end my life! I don t know how you can be anything but a mother, wanting
to protect your child, so I kept on praying to the Lord that no weapon formed against
her would prosper. And we kept on going forward. We also saw one of the top pediatric neurosurgeons
in the country. We learned that one of her conditions was Spinal Bifida, and the Dr.
said, We have operated on many Spinal Bifida babies, and we can close the wound in the
back, it doesn t cure the Spinal bifida, but it protects against infection. And he said,
We do that surgery all the time, but then he paused and said well, no we really don
t do it that often anymore. I think it s the folic acid. And I think he realized that they
don t do those surgeries anymore because the babies with Spinal Bifida don t make it to
him anymore. Their lives are ended violently in the womb, and the statistics are pretty
high for what that number really is. The reason I love this ministry is because as a woman
walking through this, you re pretty much alone. You have all the doctors and nurses coming
at you, telling you everything is wrong, and then asking you what you want to do, and telling
you in late stages that you can still abort, but you re alone. I mean, you have your family,
but there s no one walking beside you that s been through it, there s no one with you,
and we know that one of the biggest ploys of devil is fear. Fear is at its highest at
this point. One of the things I love about this ministry is that its women and men walking
beside women and men in a very difficult situation. I was fortunate enough at the end of my pregnancy
to have two women come beside me. When I think of the Be Not Afraid Ministry I think of it
as like when Joshua went to fight the Malachites, and every time Moses raised his hands they
were winning the battle, and every time he would put his hands down, they would be losing
the battle. But his hands got so heavy to hold up that I believe it was Aaron and Hur
that came beside him to hold up his arms when they got too tired to walk forward. And when
I think of Be Not Afraid Ministry I think of Aaron and Hur and how we can walk beside
people as peer ministers or any type of support so that these women can mother, and so that
these families can walk forward towards what God has called them to do. Thank You. [Content_Types].xml
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