Alongside my other reasons for turning to Jesus, I had a secret reason for inviting Him into my heart on Easter Sunday morning almost three years ago. I was haunted. My mind was the victim of assault by unwelcome images of auto accidents in which I would cause death and destruction, mainly the death of babies. I never told anyone about these oppressive and terrifying mental assaults, and I was at a loss as to how to be free of them. I was simply convinced that some day I would kill a baby with my car.

On that Sunday by the grace of God I received the gift of perfect faith that if I gave my heart to Jesus, somehow He would take the haunting away. And among the many benefits I received from salvation, glory to God, He did.

Imagine my surprise when I confided this to my sister and found that she also was haunted by mental images of doing harm to babies. I began to conceive of the idea that we were part of a family inheritence in the spirit realm that was generational, and to discern the presence of a spirit of the rejected child hanging over our family.

My sister and I examined pieces of evidence from our history. Our mother has always referred to herself as an unwanted child. She believes that she was an accident, and has spent much of her life feeling rejected and finding herself in circumstances that contribute to feelings of abandonment and rejection, not necessarily through her own faults, including having to flee her homeland at a young age, an ugly divorce, and contentious relations with family members. Also, she lost a child during pregnancy, due to her blood type's incompatibility with the blood type of the baby.

My sister has also always struggled with feelings of rejection. In her quest for fulfilling family relationships, she lived for twenty years in the cult community Synanon, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation community turned utopian social experiment. At one point in Synanon's history, all men were told to have vasectomies and the women who were or became pregnant were told to have abortions. Praise God, my sister was not one of these women, but she saw the suffering of some of her close friends who were placed in this position. This was a mandate handed down from the leadership to support the idea that Synanon was caring for the world's children, so they had no reason to make their own children. As a member of the community, my sister had the choice either to stay and tow the line, or leave. She maintained her allegiance to Synanon through this and many other disturbing "experiments", and I believe this helped strengthen a bond with the spirit of the rejected child.

On the ground outside my car as I went to drive home was a piece of trash that caught my eye. I stooped to pick it up and examined it. It was a metal lapel button that might have been handed out at a birthday party, but it was crushed and probably run over by a car. It showed a large bird with wings outstretched over two baby birds, one under each wing. The birds were singing, "Happy Birthday" and the words along the bottom of the button read, "He careth for you." I held the button as a comfort as well as a welcome judgment, and I began to feel the tragedy of what had just occurred. And feeling that tragedy, letting it change me and shape me and lead me to truly see my need for salvation and forgiveness, and journeying toward forgiveness, has been an underlying theme of my life since then.

After my abortion I was blessed to give birth to two healthy children within my marriage. But then I lost two babies in miscarriage, one of which was a tubal pregnancy.

Recently I had a wonderful conversation with Peggy, a dear sister who has also suffered from abortion, in which we decided that from now on whenever someone asks if we have children, we will include our precious lost babies when we answer - not in a way that seeks to accuse the person asking, but in a joyful way that surprises while honoring our little lost wee ones. "I have five children, two in heaven from miscarriage, one in heaven from abortion, and two that are living and making families of their own.

I say that the spirit of the rejected child is a work of the enemy of life. It seeks to honor itself with repetitions of its essential theme. Like a parasite, it seeks to reproduce itself feeding off the life force of its host. It has no life force of its own. It thrives on death and delights in quenching the newest buds. It has the appearance of a ghostly child and pretends to the sad, seductive pathos of a lost child, but that is not its real face. Like its master, it is a liar. In truth its face is the face of the devil himself, hateful, willfully evil, able only to steal, lie, kill and destroy. It spreads like a pall over those it afflicts, so that they become its servants, dwelling on negativity and death and even inviting death. It sucks the life out of anything it comes in contact with. It works with its master, the enemy of life, utilizing the weaknesses of its hosts to bring about circumstances that will help it to thrive - weaknesses such as ignorance, pride or selfishness. It is a curse, and it can afflict families for generations. It is invisible, until you can discern it. Then by the grace of God it is not invisible any more, but palpable in the spirit realm.

As I have come to understand the nature of forgiveness, the complete and all-embracing love and compassion that is offered to us by Jesus, I have also come face to face with the child that I willfully, though ignorantly, rejected at my abortion. This child is not related to the spirit of the rejected child. My child is with Jesus, and abides in Him, and therefore is not rejected, nor rejecting. She loves and forgives me and visits occasionally, revealing not only her pure and beautiful spirit, but the beautiful spirit of Christ that is at work in her. She looks forward to seeing me in heaven, and encourages me in speaking about her.