Two Precious Lives

Nepal | OM International

The milk lady’s voice sounds a little different this evening as she pours my daily two litres of buffalo milk into my pot.

“Yes?” I reply.

“Didi, how do you get rid of a baby? What I can do? What medicine can I take to throw this baby away?”

She has just found out that she is pregnant. She already has two daughters, which in this culture is a burden. Her family lives on rented land, and the income from the milk and vegetables they sell is barely enough to live on. Their bamboo and tin shack is perhaps less comfortable than the shelter for their cows and water buffalos. I can only imagine the struggle of raising children under these circumstances.

“Didi, do you have any medicine that will get rid of this baby?”

Her question cuts me to the heart. I ache for this unwanted baby and shudder to think of the hopelessness that has driven a mother to want to destroy her own child. She hasn’t even told her husband or parents that she is pregnant. Instead she came to me in hopes that I can free her from a burden that should be a blessing.

As the sun sets behind me, I share the truth about abortion. I explain that what is growing inside her is not just a mass of tissue as she believes, but that it already has a beating heart. I share about murder and sin and how the God that made the heavens and earth also made this baby. To destroy it would be to destroy His creation, and that is sin. She leaves in the descending darkness, and I wonder if she understands.

The milk lady doesn’t come the next day. Her mother-in-law delivers the evening milk instead. I fear that she has found a way to kill the child she was carrying and is recovering from some medicine or procedure.

For five days I wait and pray, and then one evening I see her coming up my driveway again. Praise God, she is still carrying the child. She broke the news of her pregnancy to her parents and in-laws, and their response was, “You must have the baby.”

For the moment the child is safe. I pray that this woman will come to truly understand the preciousness of human life, her own and her baby’s, and that the child will have the chance to live and the opportunity to choose eternal life.

Credit: OM International
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