“In 1971, at the age of 19, I discovered I was pregnant. Total panic set in. This problem had to be taken care of, I told myself. It had to go away. My first and only thought was of my parents and their reaction. They must never find out. I knew that they would disown me.”

Curled up on our coach, feeling lost and very sad, her only comfort coming from a hot mug of coffee she clings to as if someone might wrestle even this from her grasp, one woman struggles with why she feels so emotionally spent.

“I remember the cold table,” she continued, “the stirrups, the loud machinery, the pain, because this time I was awake. Next, I’m curled up on my living room floor by myself, crying and feeling very sad, lonely, ashamed, confused, and empty. I cried all night, but didn’t know why I was crying, or for whom.”

Her problem was supposed to have been taken care of back then, when she and those around her were convinced abortion was the best solution to a very difficult situation. It was just “a blob of tissue” anyway. At least that’s what the nurse told her.

“So why do I still feel so depressed after all these years?”A staunch pro-life advocate in her church, this woman is a secret sufferer. She is one of every three women in evangelical churches who have had at least one abortion. Who does this woman share her life’s pain with? No one. And every time pro-life supporters—herself among them—speak to the harm of abortion, her wounds are opened again to the mounting years of guilt and torment as her silent screams drive her painful contradictions further inside her.

She loves God and she knows God loves her, even though she feels unlovely. She has received his acceptance, but she is convinced no one from the fellowship of her church would ever forgive her—never mind love her—if they were to find out the truth about her.

Sometimes coffee is a person’s only friend.

That’s why she’s on our couch right now. In the security of Marti’s acceptance, she is beginning to open up.

I act as if I am trying to understand what is going on here—pretending to lend my support—but the full impact is missing me. I get the Kleenex. I am a willing servant, often covering my own conflict with mundane activity, but I am feeling detached inside. I didn’t relate that well to Marti’s births—how can I connect to this death so long ago? My wife has told me how I was present in body, but emotionally somewhere else during her pregnancies. I feel the same pulling away now. I want this little session to be over with. I want to get on with my evening. I resent the intrusion of someone’s inner pain.

On top of that, I’m missing a good ball game right now. I wonder what team is up and if there are any runners on base.

Marti, however, lives for moments like this, and I can sense her intensity growing. I am pushing away what she is embracing. She warms her hands as though readying herself for what is to come.

Now she’s moving things along by suggesting I go over and put my arm around this woman and hold her. Marti knows full well what I am doing—why I am trying to get away. She knows I can’t embrace her without embracing my own sin, and I am not very good at that. It’s certainly not that I don’t sin; it’s just that… well… okay, I’ll come out and say it: my sin isn’t quite as bad as hers. The big rub, if I’m totally honest, is that I’m willing to admit I’m a sinner, just not a really bad one. She’s lower than me on the totem pole of sin. I’ll embrace her, but I have to come down the pole to get to her. What I’d really like are levels of grace, please, so I can stay with what I consider the not-so-bad sinners yet still get forgiven. People can know I was bad, just not that bad.

So I move over next to her on the couch, but my arms stay at my side.

“I turned over my life to Him, all except one area—one door,” she went on. “That door was very tightly locked—locked so tight that my memories were just about gone. I called myself “pro-choice” back then. To say or think anything else would have been admitting the impossible. The idea that I had killed my child was too painful. Denial continued to be very strong, but fortunately so was Jesus’ love and grace.”

Darn. I was going to hand her my grace card and go check out the ball game, but it looks like she already has one with lots of room on it. That means I have to relate to her as my sister.

Marti knows me so well. That’s why she is pushing us together, as if to say Go ahead. Crawl into each other’s pain. Grace will find you.

“I even became quite active in my church,” she continues, too much in her own struggle to have a clue about mine. “Not only was I going to be the best mom in the world, but now I was going to be the best church woman also, doing many good and important things. But the busier I got at church, the more friends I had, the lonelier and trashier I felt. I worked harder, but I knew I was garbage.”

Now I’m thinking about our church and realizing it’s full of people like me who have signed an unwritten pact to avoid the shame of confessing one another’s sin, so we can keep on pretending we don’t have any. Suddenly I see the tragedy of this situation. This woman is dying of thirst right next to the fountain of grace, but because no one is appropriating that grace for their own life, no one has any to share with her. We’re damming up the flow of the very river that washes each of us clean every hour—every minute.

I know there’s no difference between this woman and me, but it’s one thing to know that in my head, and another to embrace her and share her position. I want to keep her the needy one. I want to stay her counselor.

I find myself moving closer and putting my arm around her. This releases more tears. I reach for more Kleenex, feeling awkward. Marti is smiling. Suddenly the counselee has an arm around the counselor, and tears are working their way into my eyes now. I fight them, trying to hold them back. My arms are telling her that everything is going to be okay. Strangely, her hold on me is telling me the same. A tangible healing is going on. I’m holding onto a self-convicted murderer, and suddenly I see the shame of my own loss… one sinner to another. The closer I get to her pain, the more I feel mine.

I think I could use some of her coffee.

For so long this woman was secretly among the walking wounded—a post-abortive woman from my church, now on my coach, finding her way into my opening heart. She always looked so great, nicely dressed, and all together. She fooled us all. I thought I had the corner on hiding what I did not think others would accept. Now we acknowledge to each other that we are both experts at this—from the sin on through to the cover-up. I am taking in all that I can.

How long have I walked as though I had no sin? How far have I gone into hiding out of fear that another would point a bony finger in my face, sending me away in scorn with each truthful word spoken. How brave this woman is to be willing to step out from behind her shame, her denial, and step into her fear and face me—the one she probably thought would be the first to throw stones at her in condemnation.

How brave of me, thank you, to face into her—to back down the totem pole to where I belong. Years ago I wrote a line in a song: You don’t sin alone/we must all bear the same load. I think I know what that means now. If we are all in this sin soup together, there is no point in comparing degrees. I cannot call her sin worse than mine and separate myself from her. Of course this means we’re in on the good stuff together, too.

I sense something changing in me. I hope her life is changing too.

Forgiveness was set in motion today. Christ died for her sin and mine. Thank goodness we were not too much for Him.

Suddenly, some barrier between us has come down. I hardly care what the score is between us, or in the ball game I wanted to watch. I’ll find out soon enough in the morning paper. The score here is two to nothing: two sinners reduced to nothing results in a win for each of us. After all, we are on the same team anyway.

“Would you like some more coffee?” I ask her. “Because, I think I would like to join you.”