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In 1981, when I was a young military officer in a western state, I was involved in an adulterous relationship that resulted in a pregnancy. I convinced myself that abortion was the only alternative to the situation. The woman was married, had other children, I was young and did not want to be saddled with the responibility of a child.

She did not want to have an abortion, and as the weeks went by I became very angry. I insisted that she have the abortion, but also offered to pay my fair share of the cost, in what I thought was a very magnanimous gesture. Finally she drove herself to a hospital in a nearby large city so that word of the abortion would not get around the base hospital where she was known.

On the night she got back from the hospital, I walked to her house under cover of darkness, wanting to see her. Standing in the bushes outside her bedroom window, it took several minutes of coaxing before she would even come to the window. I insisted that she unlock the front door and let me in. I will never forget what I saw when she let me in -- her face was a mask of grief and horror that I had never seen on a person before or since. It was at that moment I knew abortion was wrong, despite the fact it had been legitimized by a decision of the Supreme Court.

I later learned that this was not her first adulterous relationship or her first abortion. I can only imagine what damage was done to her soul and psyche by having gone through the horror multiple times. To this day, I wonder how things turned out for her. Shortly after the abortion, she left to join her husband at an overseas base and I have never seen her since.

Even though I had professed faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior shortly before the beginnning of my adultery, I am sorry to say this was not the end of my many illicit sexual relationships. Finally, I could no longer deny my own wretchedness and as a broken man, asked Jesus Christ to forgive me. This time I "possessed" faith in Him for sure.

Soon afterwards, I was sitting at my kitchen table in broad daylight one afternoon not thinking about much of anything, and was suddenly startled by the appearance of a young boy visible from the shoulders up, whose face I coult not see. I am at a loss to describe exactly what I saw since he wasn't physically there, but he was there.

He was bathed in a beautiful light, and a gentle breeze was blowing through his hair. His appearance lasted only a few brief seconds, but I immediately knew who he was -- he was my child, who was now in heaven with the Daddy, Abba God, who loves him and wants him.

Today, I believe that by allowing me to see my child, my gracious heavenly Father gave me the assurance that my child was not lost forever in a biological waste container in a cold city hospital somewhere, but was alive, warm, and being well cared for. I saw him once again in a dream a few years later, and this time he was looking at me as he was dying from the abortion. Maybe this time God was showing me just a little bit of the reality of death by abortion, for my own good. I have not seen him after that dream.

Since the abortion experience, I have sought counseling several times for severe depression. Until recently, I didn't think that guilt over the abortion itself was a factor in my depression. I had stuffed it so deeply and had never fully grasped the reality of what I had done until God showed me that the child was (and is) a real person.

It wasn't until I began to receive Christian counseling in more recent years, as well as excellent Bible teaching at my church, that I have been able to find some peace over issues related to sin and its effects on all human beings. I still struggle with depression, but as my relationship with the Lord grows I find that He is constantly lifting me up in direct response to my prayers.

I have learned some valuable lessons from my abortion experience. I know the destructive power of sin. I recognize that in absence of the love of Christ, sin within families is passed from one generation to the next, with each new generation putting their own fingerprints on it. I see that the absence of parental love will cause a child to find destructive ways to fill the gigantic holes left by a lack of love. I am grateful for the power and love of God to remake sin-scarred lives.

I have placed a plaque in memory of my aborted son at the National Memorial for the Unborn in Chattanooga, Tennessee, because the plaques represent at least one parent whose heart has been changed by God, as mine has been.

I know that I have forgiveness from God for what I have done. I wish I could tell my child's mother how sorry I am for forcing her to abort and to ask her to forgive me. I will pray for the day when the women who were coerced or pressured into having an abortion, or who just plain did not receive support from their partners, will see those men come before them in brokenness and repentance to ask forgiveness.

--A friend of Assist

Assist Crisis Pregnancy Center offers post-abortion recovery Bible studies for men and women. Men are encouraged to attend with their wives, especially those women who have had an abortion. That way the husbands will be better able to identify with her pain and help in the healing process.

The testimony on this page is true and identifying details have been omitted or altered.