Marcela’s moving history, who found peace and healed the deep wounds of his soul after undergoing four abortions, is a tangible example of God’s infinite mercy.
By narrating his brave testimony to ACI Press, this Argentine woman reveals the difficulties of the healing path, which he toured thanks to the Esperanza project, a pastoral accompaniment program for emotional and spiritual healing of people injured by abortion.
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After his conversion, he understood that life is a gift from God, a conviction that led him to adopt an unwanted child whose mother suffered schizophrenia.
The first abortion at 16
Marcela did not have an easy childhood. His father’s alcoholism caused a great lack of communication in his family, in which “respect was more fear than empathy.”
Remember that she was “a quiet and dreamy teenager”, who did not assimilate the problems at home. “My parents were separated under the same roof,” he laments. As for their sisters, they were practically unknown.
With just 12 years, he says, he found the love of his life, Juan. He was 13 years old at that time, “already measured, what we felt was stronger,” he says. “With 16 years my first pregnancy came, everything was unexpected, I was afraid, but I wanted it, I wanted it.”
However, his mother told him that it was not possible to raise his son, “and they canceled me with a lot of excuses to which I could not answer, defend myself, defend him, nor shout, nor cry,” Marcela laments.
After the first abortion, a great vacuum arrived that joined the silence, the lack of comfort and rebellion. “It was as if it had not existed, but it was recorded in my mind,” he says.
Juan, however, did not know anything: “I always assumed that it was me who had to fix the problem.”
With 19 years, the same thing happened again. And, after a new abortion, the second, became pregnant again after a few years. “But this time it was different, I felt that this pregnancy should be, that I was willing to everything for the love of my life and this baby.” And then Flor was born.
“At that time Juan had no safe job, he drank alcohol and consumed (drugs), which brought a lot of instability to the couple. I matured suddenly with a daughter in my arms and with a lot of responsibilities, ”he says.
Loneliness nest in his soul
Remember how loneliness “struck in my soul”, anger grew “and anger won so much space that she got out of control, attacking the most precious she had,” his daughter. A year and a half, again, she became pregnant again. “Once again I solved the problem from the learned mode … After each abortion I felt that I had taken a weight off, which was over time totally the opposite.”
“My temperament was getting stronger. Flor, my daughter, suffered my hardness. My love for Juan was transforming. It was no longer the same. The economic situation was difficult and in 1995, for the last time, I got pregnant. ” Although Juan wanted to have it, Marcela refused: “My answer was a resounding.”
Background to start healing
After the fourth abortion, Marcela says he had “the wounded heart and the broken soul” and that the “touching” to start to heal. “The backpack he wore was infernal, the sadness emerged through my eyes, but I could not express any feeling, my silent soul did not know how to ask for help, I did not hug or let me hug, I think I growled and barking before anything good that I would like to approach ”
Remember with special sadness the moment in which he went through “what I wanted to desperately forget, which I thought was forever buried: my daughter went through that same situation and aborted.”
“I thought I had everything controlled, that everything was fine, they are always the same excuses,” he says. However, he understood that “if I did not cut with this circle nothing would change, or heal; There was always going to be death in our lives. ”
A real conversion
“And that is how we started our conversion together, healing from within, taking out everything rotten and again rescuing the lost joy and all the good that was drowned, and it is best that it was together I no longer felt alone.”
It was a long path, remarked, and it was not easy either. “The healing process for abortion wounds meant recognizing our mistakes, apologizing and forgiving, and also putting everything learned.” Once healed, he understood that “life is a gift from God.”
“It also meant courage to ask and listen to our loved ones, who also carry their backpack; Understand and accompany many times from silence. ” In the midst of suffering, he found God and understood that sometimes “allows things so that we can later know his mercy and love.”
The instruments of the Holy Spirit
He explains to ACI Press that his way of conversion “was long” and that, in 2002, he decided to confirm. “If you ask me how I got there, I don’t know, I think the Holy Spirit used many instruments.” The following year, Juan was also confirmed, and in 2004 they married. “I helped as a catechist several years, but without still testimony of everything I had lived.”
Over time, he received an invitation to participate in a Provida group and that was how he met the Esperanza Project. “I encouraged and with enthusiasm I began to work, somehow I felt that this was my place, I learned to put myself in my neighbor’s shoes no longer judge.”
“I understood that each situation is unique, but not impossible in the eyes of God … how much pain can be mitigated with a hug, an attentive ear, a word of encouragement and the hope that things can improve,” he says.
The coordinator of the Esperanza Project in Argentina, Ana Salgado, stressed to ACI Press that “accompaniment is a place where God is revealed and in each one does it in a different way.”
“Marcela and Juan were truly a source of revelation for the two people who accompany them. Revelation of the immense unconditional love of God, of his patience and generosity, of his way of doing ‘new things’ ”.
He emphasizes that Juan and Marcela made “a path that allowed them to get out of that repetition circle, in which many times those who live experiences of abuse live. A path that could awaken that heart that they felt anesthetized … away from all feeling or emotion. A path that led them to discover a meaning through delivery or repair. ”
Adopted a child who was saved from abortion
In 2012, God put in his hands a child “saved from being aborted by a mother with schizophrenia who could not take care, an absent father and a family with many difficulties.”
“One day he appeared with his grandmother in the parish, where I worked. The boy was six months old and she asked me if it was possible that we helped her for adoption, what I replied with the heart ‘give it to me’, and so everything began, ”Marcela recalls.
In 2022 Juan died victim of cancer, “half of my heart went with him.” Marcela thanks God for his life and for having experienced all his mercy.
Almudena Martínez-Bordiú
I am graduated in journalism and advertising from the CEU San Pablo University of Madrid. Specialized in religious information in Spain since 2015. I have been a senior correspondent for ACI Press and Ewtn News in the Vatican for two years and I am currently a correspondent from Europe based on Spain.