Deep Pain, Deeper Grace

Dannah Gresh: They said it was a safe procedure. They said it was only a lump of tissue. They said it would be fine. But deep down, Heidi Jenkins knew she wasn’t fine.

Heidi Jenkins: The doctor insisted on being paid in cash, and I remember crying as the cash machine spit out enough $20s and $50s to cover the cost.

Dannah: We’re going to hear a story today of deep pain . . . and even deeper grace! Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for January 20, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the author of Surrender: The Heart God Controls, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Several months ago, I came across a testimony in an online article that was so encouraging, about the grace of God in a woman’s life. She had been impacted through a ministry that I knew my dear friend, Vicki Rose, was familiar with.

So I sent a link to Vicki and asked, “Do you know this woman? I thought you’d be interested in this article.” And then, as Vicki and I connected, I realized the woman I’d been reading about is Vicki’s sister! So, yes, she did know about Heidi Jenkins!

You’re going to have the privilege today of hearing a moving story of God’s grace reaching out and down and into the life of a needy woman, and pouring His grace into her, and now through her to others. 

Dannah: Well, here’s who we’re hoping will be touched by what Heidi shares today:

• If you’ve ever had an abortion, keep listening. Heidi’s had two.
• If you work for a care ministry that counsels post-abortive women, keep listening. Heidi does, too.
• If you’ve ever suffered from depression or a guilty conscience, thinking God can’t forgive what you’ve done in the past, keep listening. Heidi Jenkins has had to fight that lie, too.

Here in the United States, every year on or around January 22, we spend some time reflecting on the sanctity of human life. That’s because abortion became the law of the land on January 22, 1973. And even though the Roe v. Wade decision was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, abortion, sadly, is still legal in many states. 

Not only that, but many countries outside the United States have legalized abortion, or they’re fighting to pass legislation to do so, even now. Legal abortion obviously affects thousands of babies every year. It affects their mothers and fathers, too. Heidi Jenkins is one of those women.

In 1969, Frank Sinatra first popularized a song that Heidi might have wanted to be the theme of her life.

Heidi: I grew up in New York City, and I looked forward to the day when I could run my life and do it my way.

Song: Frank Sinatra singing: 

I did it my way!¹

Dannah: Heidi grew up in a religious home. She went to church. She showed interest in the things of God. But that desire for independence really began to surface in her teen years. 

Heidi: I think because my parents were so strict . . . That was in the days before cell phones, and I had to call them every time I went somewhere by myself to let them know I got there safely. I just remember feeling constrained by that. So I just looked forward to the day when I didn’t have to report in that I was somewhere where I said I would be. 

So I went off to college, and bought the 1970s propaganda, “My body, my life, my choice!” After college I ended up pregnant, and it was not my plan nor my timing and very inconvenient, because I was close to getting my Master’s degree. Planned Parenthood told me abortion would be a safe, minor procedure.

So I had an abortion and went on a camping trip two days later, trying to pretend that everything was back to normal . . . except it wasn’t.

Dannah: Heidi was suffering! Emotionally, she felt a deep sense of guilt. Physically, she got an infection as a result of the abortion. Then, she had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics she’d been prescribed. Because of her guilty conscience, she just assumed God was punishing her for the abortion.

Heidi: Although I healed physically, I felt scarred emotionally and worried continually that I would never be able to get pregnant again . . . because I really did want kids. I wanted eventually to be a mom. 

So, I put all my energy into an advertising career and became a workaholic. I barely had time to go out and meet the wonderful man who became my husband. After a miscarriage, we spent the next few years pursuing infertility treatments resulting in the birth of healthy twins.

I still couldn’t believe God had forgiven me for my abortion, so I would frequently wake up my sleeping babies just to make sure they were still breathing. 

Dannah: Wow. This permeated every day for you, this guilt, this shame.

Heidi: Yeah, I was, in some ways, just waiting for the other shoe to drop, I guess you would say. When the twins were a little more than a year old, I became pregnant once again unexpectedly. I had terrible morning sickness 24/7. The advice I got from friends, family, and even my doctor was to have an abortion.

The doctor insisted on being paid in cash. I remember crying as the cash machine spit out enough $20s and $50s to cover the cost. The minute the abortion was in process, I knew that this was not what God had in mind, but by then it was too late.

Dannah: Heidi’s response to the first abortion had been difficult. This time was worse—way worse.

Heidi: I was traumatized, constantly sad, really angry at all the people who had so misguided me. I felt ashamed, conflicted, full of guilt, anxious, and very depressed. And although I didn’t know it, I was experiencing many of the feelings that women can have after having an abortion.

Dannah: If you’ve ever been there, you know exactly what Heidi’s talking about. Maybe you’re there right now. I want you to know, God isn’t finished with you. He wants to bring you joy and peace. He wants you to find your satisfaction in Him. Here’s how He did that for Heidi Jenkins. 

Heidi: My sister had become a Christian and invited me to hear Chuck Colson speak about how he had accepted Christ while serving time in prison for his role in the Watergate break-in when he was the White House counsel for President Nixon.

Dannah: And that appealed to you?

Heidi: I thought it was interesting. I remembered the whole Watergate drama, and I just remember thinking, Well, I remember Chuck Colson. Wow, how did he get to be a Christian? He went to prison. 

Dannah: Right, it was shocking! Now, what’s interesting is the invitation. There’s a little bit of a connection to where you were invited to go. Tell us where you were going to hear Chuck Colson speak.

Heidi: Well, I had been invited to a Bible study at the DeMoss house.

Dannah: The DeMoss house . . . Nancy DeMoss, not as in ourNancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, but as in her mom.

Heidi: Her mom! And my sister, Vicki Rose, at the time was working there. She has been a guest on Revive Our Hearts and shared her testimony about her marriage.

Vicki Rose: My burden really is for marriages, Christian marriages especially, that are struggling. If everyone were honest, probably everyone would say marriage is a struggle. It’s very hard work, not just a struggle, but hard work, daily.

God has brought us through so many murky waters, and we still face challenges. We’re looking toward almost thirty years of marriage, and we still face challenges. Yet we can turn to the Word of God and stand on that foundation and watch God bless us for our feeble attempts at obedience. That’s the excitement and the joy.

Dannah [to Heidi]: Are you the big sister or the little sister?

Heidi: I’m the big sister.

Dannah: Wow, what a powerhouse you two are!

Heidi: Well, thank you. Vicki invited me to the Bible study at the DeMoss house right after my kids were born. So, I had been going there for Bible studies . . . not totally sure that I agreed with the part about how I was a sinner and needed redemption.

Dannah: So I’ve got to ask a question about that, though. You’re saying you were feeling depressed, anxious, guilty, ashamed about these abortions. And at the same time, you were seeking and interested in things of the Bible but going, “I’m not so sure that I need redemption.” That seems like holding two very diametrically opposed thoughts in your head! You must have been aware of that. Or were you not aware that those were in opposition to one another?

Heidi: Well, I was aware. I was totally destroyed by what I had done. I was desperate to figure out how to move forward!

Dannah: Yeah. And how did you?

Heidi: My husband and I went to the dinner. Chuck Colson spoke about how he’d made choices he regretted . . . but he radiated a peacefulness and a joy that I really envied!

Chuck Colson [testimony]: I thank God for going to prison because, although I had found and accepted Him—or He had found me—that was only the beginning for me. I was a pretty strong-willed guy of Swedish ancestry with a lot of drive. I thought I had gotten myself to the top. It took a long time to bust my will. I had to be in prison, absolutely helpless, before I really had the lesson proved to me, that I had to simply say, “Well, Lord Jesus, I trust You to be Lord of my life!” It was through a lot of personal agony and hardship. But when that happened, I really found a freedom that I’d never had before!

Heidi: When he offered a prayer to receive Christ as my Lord and Savior, I prayed silently along even though I wasn’t totally sure what that would change. I had gone to church, been confirmed, and even prayed occasionally. 

But he explained that that didn’t make me a Christian any more than sitting in a garage made me a car. That imagery really made a lot of sense to me. I’d grown up sitting in a church, but clearly, it hadn’t made me a Christian. I didn’t know what being a Christian was.

Chuck: The illness which affects humanity is alienation, and the answer to it is the reconciling power of Christ! I love the verse of Scripture that says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world [to] himself” (2 Cor. 5:19 KJV) because God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself today. 

When you accept Christ, when you come to Him, when you find that tremendous excitement of knowing who you are and where you’ve come from, and where you’re going, the Creator of the universe loves you through Jesus Christ. Know that it goes deeper. As you begin to walk with Christ, and as you begin to try to have a daily relationship, it deepens. He can be the Lord of your life as well!

Dannah: And did that night make a difference?

Heidi: Yes!

Dannah: What happened that evening? To put it in the words Paul uses in Colossians chapter 1, that God delivered Heidi from the “domain of darkness and transferred [her] to the kingdom of [his beloved] Son. In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (vv. 13–14 CSB).

And what’s more, it was the beginning point of a transformation process in Heidi. Now, a process doesn't happen in a single moment. But God began to work on her heart. He used a variety of tools to gradually change her thinking. 

Heidi: First of all, finding an understanding, non-judgmental space to share and validate what I was feeling and experiencing. Also, knowing that there were other women like me who were struggling, yet they allowed themselves to be vulnerable and to share their stories. 

I sought help from a Christian counselor who modeled Jesus’ grace, forgiveness, and love. He helped me to realize that I was so busy blaming everybody else for my decision that I had never taken responsibility and ownership for my own actions.

Dannah: That must have been hard to hear.

Heidi: Well, I needed to hear it! 

Dannah: Heidi needed to come to terms with the fact that God had truly forgiven her for those abortions. Shame and condemnation controlled her. Her counselors pointed her to the Scriptures, and that produced in her a drive to study the Bible.

Heidi: I needed to learn more about this Jesus who forgave me despite my—what I thought was unpardonable—sin. It led me to want to spend time with Him and develop a quiet time so that I could learn more. 

Dannah: You used the words “unpardonable sin.” What is the truth about that? Is abortion an unpardonable sin?

Heidi: No! There are two verses that really were so meaningful to me that I carried them around on an index card in my purse. I Scotch-taped them on a mirror in the bathroom. I had one attached to the dog’s leash. I had them everywhere my eyes could sort of wander, in the beginning.

The first verse is from Psalm 103, verse 12: “As far as the east is from the west, so far [has] he removed our transgressions from us” (KJV). And if you picture how far the east is from the west, arms just can’t open wide enough to even give us a picture of that!

Dannah: Yes, they are unending! They cannot meet! It’s impossible.

Heidi: They cannot meet, exactly! And then, there was a wonderful Bible study teacher at the DeMoss house who really took an interest in my healing from my abortions. She introduced me to a verse from 1 John chapter 1, verse 9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and [purify] us from all unrighteousness” (KJV).

And “all unrighteousness” includes abortion! And she said to me, “This is the Christian’s ‘bar of soap.’” And then she said, “If we confess, He is faithful and just to forgive . . . from ALL unrighteousness!”

And that sent me on a journey of searching for truth throughout the Bible. There are countless verses about forgiveness. There’s a passage from Micah chapter 7, verses 18–19, that says: 

Who is a God like you, who pardons sins and forgives the transgressions of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy . . .You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. (NIV) 

And then, there’s one from Isaiah chapter 38, verse 17: 

Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish. In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction, you have put all my sins behind your back. (NIV) 

So, this was evidence to me of God’s forgiveness. I felt that if God had forgiven me, then I needed to forgive myself. And yet, I was told that there’s nowhere in the Bible that talks about self-forgiveness.

And the counselor who was helping me initially walk through this said, “By not forgiving yourself you’re saying that what Jesus suffered on the cross wasn’t enough to cover your sin, and therefore He needs to suffer more! That’s your pride in saying you can’t forgive yourself.”

And yet, so many women—Christians and non-Christians alike—state that they grapple with the inability to forgive themselves.

Dannah [to listeners]: Maybe you’re in bondage to a sense of having to “do penance” for your sin. You know, the Bible calls that “a different gospel.” 

• It’s trying to earn God’s favor. 
• It’s legalistic, performance-based thinking. 
• It’s a sort of self-imposed slavery. 

We’ll hear more from Heidi Jenkins tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts, but here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth with a gospel-centered response to that faulty thinking.

Nancy (from “Free from Condemnation”): Two of Satan’s greatest weapons against women today are shame and condemnation. Even though we know God has forgiven us, many rise each morning to put on the familiar, dirty rags. I find so many women who are living with this sense of bondage to what they’ve done in their past: the infidelity, the abortions, the wrong choices, the sinful habit patterns. 

Even though they might have confessed that and repented of it, there is again this tape playing in their mind, again and again and again, that you can’t really be forgiven. That shame and that condemnation, I think, is a way of life, a stronghold for so many women.

[But] forgiveness is made possible because the price for that sin, the penalty for that sin, has been paid by Jesus Christ. I love that verse in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that says, “God made Him [Christ] who knew no sin [to become sin], to be made sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

So all of my sin, all of that failure was placed on Christ at the cross. He took it on Himself so that we could be clothed in his righteousness! That is why Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” I know there is not a person listening to our voices today who is not guilty of sin. We all are, and there are some who have been living in that bondage.

Think back perhaps weeks or months or years or decades ago to choices that were made, sins that were committed. Maybe something that you’ve never told anyone else about. You’ve "walked through all these years with that shame, that condemnation, that sense that you could never be truly forgiven. 

It’s that abortion, that adulterous affair; it’s that lie, that deception, that broken relationship, that broken vow. I want to just challenge you right now to lift that sin up into the light; to acknowledge it, which you may have done in the past, as a sin—not just a failure, not just a mistake, but as a sin—against a holy God.

 

And then if you are a child of God—you know that you’ve repented of your sin and you’ve placed your faith in Jesus Christ—then look to the cross, look to Christ and say, "Thank you Lord Jesus. That sin, my sin—and name it for what it is—was placed on You. You paid the penalty for that sin. You bore my condemnation in Yourself. The wrath of God that I deserved was placed on Jesus Christ. And so now by faith I receive Your righteousness, Your cleansing, the freedom! And thank You that You look at me as if I had never, ever committed that sin." Counsel your heart according to the truth of God’s Word!

By faith receive God’s forgiveness, and say, "I’m not going to let the enemy continue to wreak havoc in my life, continue to put me under the pile or the bondage of guilt of sin that has been confessed and put under the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. It’s possible you’ve never really understood your sin in the light of what Nancy just said. Maybe you struggle with shame and condemnation, and you find it hard to receive God’s forgiveness. 

Can I point you to something? There’s a helpful explanation of the gospel at this page on our website: ReviveOurHearts.com/GoodNews. You can walk through what it says there and, as Nancy said, counsel your heart according to God’s Word. Again, head to ReviveOurHearts.com/GoodNews.

And if you’re looking for helpful resources related to emotional healing after an abortion, we’ve put together a list of things for you to check out. There’s a link in the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Our resource of the month is the twelve-week, in-depth study by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Tim Grissom, titled Seeking Him: Experiencing the Joy of Personal Revival. It walks you through the process of being honest with God and others, having a clear conscience, repentance, and receiving God’s grace. This month, Seeking Him is our thank-you gift to you for your donation of any size. Find out more at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Today we heard from Heidi Jenkins who discovered the joy of personal revival herself as she healed emotionally from her abortions. Tomorrow she’ll be back to tell us how, for her, part of that healing process has included helping other women who’ve been through that traumatic experience. I hope you’ll be back tomorrow for Revive Our Hearts!

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

1 “My Way.” Frank Sinatra. Nothing But the Best ℗ 2008 Frank Sinatra Enterprises, LLC.

 

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.