We are Doug and Debbie Heydrick and on August 4, 1994, we lost a child we named Julia, through miscarriage at 10-1/2 weeks of pregnancy. This precious life would be with us for only a brief period of time, yet forever change our lives. For years, we have been trusting God's heart to fulfill His promise in us that, "All things work together for good to them who love God and are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28) On the day of our loss we decided to never let anyone we know suffer this grief alone and to find some way to reach out to them. That same day, a wonderful book, entitled, I'll Hold You in Heaven, was given to us by a couple. Through this book our hearts were encouraged and our grief was validated as we began to learn more about the significance of life in the womb. This whole concept is something that the world would like to negate. Another friend spoke these words to us, "Your pain will someday be less intense, but the memories of your baby should never be less significant." Although at the time, I did not believe how these words could be true. As the months and years went by, our hearts did begin to heal and we began to look for ways to reach out to people grieving with our same pain. A dear friend lost a baby, Hannah, in June of 1996 at 17 weeks of pregnancy. We grieved with their family and out of our desire to comfort them, Doug decided to create our first keepsake in honor of Hannah. We put a treasured poem on it, "Little Footprints," that had spoke the words of our hearts during our time of loss. We were able to take this keepsake up to the hospital at the time of Hannah's delivery and her little footprints were printed on it. That same day, Doug made the second keepsake for our family in honor of our little Julia. After these initial keepsakes were created, we began to share them with friends, acquaintances, and churches. Hannah's mother, who was a Labor and Delivery nurse, would on occasion call and request a keepsake for someone at the hospital who had experienced a loss. Our next big step of sharing our keepsakes happened on the 2nd anniversary of our loss, definitely a "God-incidence". On August 4, 1996, we had the wonderful privilege of providing keepsakes to over 50 families in our church on the "Sanctity of Life" Sunday, who had lost children. This service was to honor not only babies lost through abortion, but also for those lost through miscarriage, stillbirth, early infant death, or any other death of a child. What an incredible blessing it was to be a part of that! As we continued to use our "Little Footprint" keepsakes as ministry tools the Lord laid it on my heart to expand our line to minister to post-abortive women in a more specific way. Post-abortive women, eventually come to a point where they question and very often regret their choice of abortion. At this time they need to know the forgiveness of Christ through a personal relationship with him and, we believe, need a place to dream of someday holding their child in Heaven. Allowing our personal experience of the pain and loss of our treasured unborn children to stir in us a vision, a friend and I joined together one evening, and through much prayer and many tears, the Lord enabled us to give birth to an abortion recovery keepsake titled, "The Gift of You." This keepsake is being shared by Focus on the Family with Crisis Pregnancy Centers for use in their Abortion Recovery Classes as a closure gift for the mother's who complete their classes, and is also available in Christian bookstores. |
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