A Way Forward

Dannah Gresh: Portia was single, pregnant, and scared. Now, years later, she recalls what motivated her to terminate her own pregnancy.

Portia Collins: I had convinced myself that this is a decision that I have to make. There's no way forward.

Dannah: Her message is ultimately a positive one. She offers this counsel to anyone who feels like she has no alternative other than abortion.

Portia: That is a lie from the enemy. You don't have to take the shame surrounding your pregnancy and take away your child's life because you feel like that's the only option that you have. There is a way forward.

Dannah: We want to bring you hope today on the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe, for January 21, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Today and tomorrow we’re going to be touching on the difficult subject of abortion. It’s a sad reality here in the United States and in many parts of the world. It’s a dark scene in my dear friend Portia’s story, and maybe it’s part of your story, too.

But as you listen, I hope you’ll hear more than sadness in Portia’s testimony. Yes, there was fear and shame and hiding. But the Lord transformed her so that now her story also shows us courage and freedom and transparency.

To set the stage, let’s listen to an illustration Nancy once gave, regarding shame.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Hester Prynne is the main character in a story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne set in seventeenth century Puritan Massachusetts. In the story, Hester has an affair. She conceives and gives birth to a baby girl. 

And then, scandalous as this is, she’s brought before a crowd to receive her punishment. The punishment is that whenever she’s in public, she’s required to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her dress. It’s never said what the “A” stands for, but it’s assumed that it stands for adultery. And so Hester lives for years, as her little girl grows up, with public humiliation and shame.

Now, the father of the child, as it turns out, is also the minister of Hester’s church. His name is Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester refuses to expose him or to reveal his identity, but Dimmesdale is tormented by a guilty conscience. He lives with deep, private shame, in fear of being found out, until just before the end of his life.

This issue of shame, whether public . . . Do you feel like you’re wearing the letter “A” around all the time? “A” for addict? “A” for adulterer? “A” for alcoholic? Or another letter for something else? 

Public shame or, for some, like Dimmesdale, private shame? This issue is huge for many women, sometimes due to their own sin, sometimes the fruit of the sins that others have committed against them for which they still feel ashamed of themselves. Sometimes, maybe often, it’s a combination of both.

Dannah: We’ll hear more from Nancy about the resolution to the shame we often carry, toward the end of the program. But now, let’s listen to part one of a conversation I had with Portia Collins in January of 2025. 

Portia, who cares for our Revive Partners, and her husband Mikhail live in Mississippi. She and I cohosted the weekly video podcast Grounded for several years. You’ll hear us refer to that here at the beginning. Let’s listen.

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Portia girl, I miss you. We used to get to see each other every Monday morning, and it's been a while.

Portia: It has. I miss you too. Dannah banana.

Dannah: You know what I need an update on? I need an update on Emmy. 

Portia: Emmy just turned seven. She's just becoming a big girl, and my heart can't take it.

Dannah: She's seven going on twenty.

Portia: I say seven going on seventy-seven, honey, because she is an old lady. She carries her purse with her every day to go to school with her book bag. You know, like, “Why do you need a purse and a book bag?”

I love her. She is a big soul. She's so sweet. 

Dannah: Yeah, you do love her. What's your favorite thing about being a mom?

Portia: My favorite thing about being a mom is just the joy of sharing life with my daughter and the privilege of being able to guide her and disciple her and be her friend and love her and share laughs. I mean, just doing every aspect of life, even the hard, like when I feel like she's being a bit sassy.

Dannah: Sassy, where did she get that, Portia? 

Portia: Her daddy, not me. 

Dannah: Well, I have loved having a front row seat to watch you mother Emmy. She is a big heart, and she does make the world a more joyful place.

She wasn't your first baby. Take us back to the circumstances surrounding your first pregnancy.

Portia: Yeah, so I was in college. I was in a relationship that I like to describe as one that I had no business being in. I grew up in a believing home where my mom and my grandmother were women who reared me in the faith. I learned about Jesus from them. And so, I guess you could say I had an understanding of what it meant to be Christian, but I didn't truly know Jesus. 

And so when I got to college, your girl just started living her best life, as they describe it, the worldly life. It was not my best life. It was, in fact, a very fast and sinful life. And that led to me getting pregnant during college. 

I would have loved for that moment to have been one where I said, “Hey, who am I going to run to to talk about this, to help me figure things out. Is it going to be the church? Is it going to be my mama? Who is it going to be?” But in my shame and my fear, I hid. I did what Adam and Eve did. 

I attempted to cover my sin, the sin of fornicating, with abortion. So that happened in college, and it was difficult. My attempts to cover my shame, honestly, only led to more shame.

Dannah: Take me to . . . I'm interested in the moment you knew you made that decision. Take me to that room, that place when you wrestled with what was going through your mind. How did you make the decision?

Portia: Before I walked into the building, there was actually someone standing outside picketing. There were several people.

Dannah: This was outside of the abortion clinic?

Portia: It was a lady, and she tried to hand me something, but I wouldn't take it from her, because I already knew. There was no convincing me that this was a right decision. It was something that I felt like I had to do to cover up. 

Dannah: So you knew it was wrong. 

Portia: Yes, absolutely I knew it was wrong, but I didn't see a way forward. So I proceeded to go into the clinic. I mean tears, just drowning in tears. I remember going in there, and I saw so many different kinds of women. I saw teenagers. I was in college, and so there were women who were older than me, who were actually even married. 

I felt like everybody was sitting in there with this same weird, glazed-over look on their faces. Like we all know why we're here. It wasn't a happy place. It's not like everybody's in there chit chatting and high fiving or anything like that. It was like we're all here to make a decision that we know we shouldn't be making. 

I felt that in the room. But like I said, my mindset was that there's no way forward. There's no way around this. So, this is a decision I had to convince myself of. This is a decision that I had to make because I couldn't undo all these other elements surrounding this.

Dannah: So you're feeling the heaviness of it before it even happened? 

Portia: Yes. 

Dannah: And then after it happened, how did that change?

Portia: Oh, it's horrific! It is horrific from the moment you step into the actual procedure room. There was just this coldness that I felt, this fear. Like I said, it's just a full awareness of this is not right. You know this, yet you're still going forward with the decision. I just remember being so cold and so weepy. I cried the entire time. 

And then once the procedure, if we want to call it that, was finished, they take you to this room for observation. There are, once again, other women in there. Everybody is just like sitting there in silence, and some are crying, and some are just staring off. 

I just remember sitting there and just weeping and feeling so broken and honestly feeling as if there's no way, like, how can God love me through this? I was like, “I'm done. Like, this is it for me. I am done.” It was hard. 

There's nothing pretty about my experience and the brokenness and the guilt that I felt. I often described it before, during, and after. Like, it didn't stop. It didn't stop at what happened in the clinic. I carried that with me for so long, and even I remember getting married later on and still carrying that. “How am I even worthy to walk down this aisle? I've made such a bad decision,” and I did. 

I got married. I had come to Christ at this point, but I'm still struggling to walk in freedom and to release the pain and the shame and the guilt that came with making that decision.

Dannah: How long was it until you told someone?

Portia: Initially, there were a few college friends that I told. It was kind of like, “I'm just letting you know this because if anything happens to me . . .” I was so afraid. I was like, “I'm going to meet immediate death because of this.” And so I was not really even telling them for comfort or support or for anything other than if anything happens to me. This is what I did.

After that it became this unspoken thing in my life. I was filled with so much fear and shame and just brokenness. Even after truly surrendering to Christ, I felt like it was something that I had to keep tucked away in the closet. How can I face other brothers and sisters in Christ knowing that I have this gross, horrible sin that has stained my life?

Dannah: As you've been talking, I've just been wondering . . . You see in the media so many times where abortion today is celebrated. That's a really different thing. In the “pro-choice” movement, the pro-abortion movement is now saying, “What a happy event it can be. What a positive thing it can be.” But you're describing something very different. 

I think the question has to be asked, “Is the reason you experienced shame because of your Christian upbringing? Or do you think that women experience that even when they've not had the faith-based experience in their home?”

Portia: I think some of it was my Christian upbringing, but I also think that there is this innate knowing that this is wrong. Even if a woman tries to suppress that, even if she tries to pretend that she's celebrating it and she's fine, and she's doing this so her life is going to be so much better because of this; there is this deep feeling of this should not be.

As I began to walk in freedom more because God basically showed me that I can't allow this to be a foothold for the enemy. I could use my voice and my experience to be able to minister to other women who have either experienced the same thing, or who are considering it. So as I began to talk more and share my experiences with other women . . . 

There were even women who were not believers that I've conversed with about this, who have said that they have much regret over making that decision—even though they have attempted to justify it in whatever ways they can. They still feel some form of this is not right. 

I think what we see in the media is what the enemy wants us to see. But it's not really the truth of what this experience is. I just really do believe that. I believe there has not been a woman I’ve talked to who has chosen abortion who has felt, “Hurray, yay, this is the best thing that I've ever done!” Every conversation that I've had has been with a woman who has said, “Well, I made this decision, but I still struggle with this.” They still struggle, even if they go later on and have children, they don't forget about the baby that they didn't have, or the babies that they didn't have. I truly believe that to be true. 

It reminds me of what we see in the early part of Romans, where the Lord is basically showing us that we know right and wrong, and we choose to suppress the truth.

Dannah: Because of the millions of women who hear Revive Our Hearts every year, we don't have to guess that there's probably someone listening who's pregnant and it's a surprise or it's difficult. What would your advice be to her right now?

Portia: I just want to say to you, there is a way forward, where you choose life, and you can actually navigate through all the uncertainties of bringing a child into this world. There is a way forward.

I don't think that there's a woman who wakes up, and this may sound a bit harsh, but I'm just gonna say it how I'm led to say it. I don't think you just wake up and say, “Hey, I'm gonna have an abortion today. I'm gonna get rid of a life today.” I think there are circumstances and ways that we convince ourselves that this has to be a decision made, because there's no way forward without making that decision. 

And so I want to tell that woman that that is a lie from the enemy. There is a way forward. You don't have to take the shame or whatever it is that you're feeling surrounding your pregnancy, and take away your child's life, because you feel like that's the only option that you have.

Dannah: What if she feels like she doesn't have anybody she can tell to ask for help? Where should she turn?

Portia: Well, Dannah, this is where if I'm speaking to an audience of people who are women who are making decisions, but I also want to speak to the women who are not faced with this decision right now . . . This is where I want to say, “Be the church.” I didn't need anyone to tell me that my decision was wrong. I knew that. But what I needed was to be able to go to believing people in my life, and to confess my sin and say this is where I am, and to have people walk alongside me in choosing life. 

Unfortunately, I can tell you all day long to go to a pregnancy center or to go here, there, and everywhere. I pray that you are in a solid, believing church that is truly, deeply rooted in the Word. I pray that you can go to your church, and that you can go to believing sisters and say, “Hey, this is where I'm at. I don't want to make this decision, and I need somebody to walk with me moving forward.” That is something that I really wish, Dannah, that I had. 

I grew up, like I said, in a Christian household, in a Christian setting. But I did not see my church as a safe haven. I saw it as a place of judgment. Honestly, I saw there were situations where I knew of young ladies getting pregnant out-of-wedlock and having to deal with the shame in front of the congregation, or situations where I just felt like, “That's not going to be me. I'm just going to take my sin and hide it.” 

And so I pray that for a woman who is pregnant and she's in this this space where she's trying to figure out what she's going to do, I pray that she can find someone in her congregation, finding somewhere where they can help you to think biblically and think of practically how you can move forward with choosing life.

Dannah: Portia Collins will be with us again on tomorrow’s program. I’ve got to say, “There are lots of steps you’ll need to take to go from that constant feeling of shame and hiding and “nobody should know this about me,” to walking in the freedom and forgiveness through Jesus. 

But one of the first things you’ll need to do is talk to someone about it. Ask the Lord to point you to a wise, godly counselor, who can walk with you on this journey. Listen: It’s not as hard as you might think. 

When you experience the freeing forgiveness of God, you’ll be like the woman in Luke chapter 7. We don’t know her name. She was probably a prostitute. She interrupted a meal at the house of Simon the Pharisee. She had a reputation as someone who nice people shouldn’t associate with. But Jesus tenderly forgave her sins. And those eating there at the table with Jesus, started wondering, Who is this man who even forgives sins?

Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy: And Jesus said to her: “Your sins have been forgiven. Go in peace.” Go into peace. The verb there is “to go on your way.”

“Don’t just stay here, loving Me, worshiping Me. You keep loving Me and worshiping Me, but you’ve got a life to live. You can’t stay at this dinner the rest of your life. Go on your way in peace.” This woman had experienced anything but that. Her past would have said, “How could she ever go on her way in peace after all she’d done, who she was?”

Your sins may have been many. All our sins have been many. And Jesus says to you: “Your sins have been forgiven. Go in peace. Go into peace. Go on your way in peace. Move forward in peace.”

• Go in peace. Move forward from this place knowing that you have peace with God. You’re no longer His enemy. You’re no longer at war with Him. And you can walk in and be filled with the peace of God. Go in peace.
• Go in peace knowing that you now have a new identity, new relationships, a new calling.
• Go in peace knowing that Jesus has paid the price for your sin.
• Go in peace knowing and believing these wonderful promises, these amazing promises that He has given you in His Word.

Let me just give you a few. If you find the shame and guilt, the memories, the pain, the sense you can’t be released from this, you know you’ve been forgiven, but you don’t feel forgiven; then it’s hard to go in peace. Let me just give you some promises to cling to, to renew your mind with truth. You might want to write these references down. 

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 5:1) 

You need to tell your heart that’s what Scripture says is true of you if you’ve been justified through faith in Christ.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom 8:1) Go in peace.

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. . . . He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. [Who could survive that?] But as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he [what?] remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103: 8–12)

These are verses you may want to memorize, verses you want to focus on, renew your mind with when shame and guilt threaten to take you under.

[I love this passage] Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:18–19)

How many of our sins?

Audience responds: All

Nancy: All of them. You say, “Well, I know all of those, but . . .” Yeah, but what? Which one will He not cast into the depths of the sea? And if He has delighted in steadfast love, if He has pardoned iniquity, if He has passed over your transgression, if He says He will tread your iniquities underfoot, what right do you have to let those sins have a choke hold in your life?

So many women live with shame, with guilt. It hangs on. It clings to them. Women who say, “But I’ve repented. I know in my head I’ve been forgiven, but I just don’t feel it.” Here’s what a lot of them say, although you won’t find this term in Scripture, they say, “I just can’t forgive myself for what I did.” And that is probably, in most cases, a giveaway to the presence of shame.

 

Scripture doesn’t ask you to forgive yourself. It doesn’t tell you to forgive yourself. You won’t find that anywhere in Scripture. It says, “Your sins, which are many, have been forgiven.” You can’t forgive your own sins, but God can. Jesus can. He paid the price for your sins.

And so, when God’s Word says He’ll tread your iniquities underfoot, He’ll pardon iniquity, He’ll pass over transgression, He will cast all your sins into the depths of the sea, what sin could you have committed that that doesn’t include?

Now, you may still say, “I don’t feel forgiven.” I will say there is often time needed to renew your mind with the promises of God’s Word, ones like the ones I’m giving you here. You’ve worn a rut into your thinking of shame and guilt. And sometimes you just need to keep counseling your mind and your heart according to truth. “Yes, I feel this, but . . . here’s what God’s Word says.”

This woman had nothing to cling to except the word of Christ: “Your sins, which are many, have been forgiven. Go in peace.”

You need a few more verses?

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, [I think that might be for Simon, the Pharisee] but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. (Prov. 28:13)

Have you confessed your sin? Have you forsaken it? Thank Jesus for mercy. Thank Him for it whether you feel you have it or not. Praise demonstrates faith.

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers [and you just feel like you could say, “Nor any other sinners.”] None of these will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. [Such was this woman.] But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor. 6:9–11)

Your sins, which are many, have been forgiven. Go your way in peace. Go on in peace. Go on in His peace. You’re no longer defined by your background, by the identity that was yours in that past life.

You may have sinned greatly. Who hasn’t? You may have been sinned against greatly. Who hasn’t? And it may take time to deal with the sense of guilt and shame and to experience full freedom and restoration for your mind and your emotions. But here’s the fact: if you’re in Christ, you have a new identity. You don’t need to go on forever living as a struggling, needy woman.

I find that some women, and I want to say this carefully, develop a new identity as a needy counselee. Now, I’m not saying don’t get counseling. Godly counsel can be a really helpful tool that God uses to help you renew your mind. But you don’t want to be a needy woman who never goes forward in peace. That’s not your identity. So don’t trade your identity of sin and shame for a new identity of forgiveness and shame. Your sins, which are many, have been forgiven. Go in peace.

Dannah: What a comforting word for anyone with shame in their past! That includes me, friend. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been reminding us: we don’t have to be defined by that shame. Find forgiveness in Jesus. Then go in peace. That teaching is from her series called “Who Loves More?” and you’ll find a link to the whole series in the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com, or on the Revive Our Hearts app.

There’s no better way to rehearse God’s grace and forgiveness than by meditating on the Word of God. Our Scripture card set is designed to help you do that. We’ve selected passages that remind you of God’s presence with you. We call it the In His Presence Scripture Card Set. 

It’s our thank-you to you for your donation of any amount this month. Contact us at ReviveOurHearts.com, or by calling 1-800-569-5959 to find out more about the In His Presence set of Scripture cards, or to make a donation. Again, they’re our gift to you in gratitude for your donation of any amount. 

Tomorrow, Portia Collins will be back with more encouragement as she continues to share from her own life experiences. I hope you won’t miss the next edition of 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.

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