Meet Lisa Dudley

Dannah Gresh: Lisa Dudley understands the pain of abortion on a personal level.

Lisa Dudley: Many women come to that point where they just don’t want to live anymore. It’s hard to live with yourself when you’ve taken the life of your own child.

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Surrender: The Heart God Controls, for Friday, August 21, 2020. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Some years ago, I had the privilege of attending a banquet hosted by the Justice Foundation in the Dallas, Texas area. I heard some remarkable stories and met some amazing people who are actively involved in advocating for life and the choice of life. I heard some beautiful testimonies from women who have in the past not chosen life, but how God has redeemed their life from destruction and is now using them to call others to choose life. Lisa Dudley was one of those women, and I sat down to have a conversation with her.

Lisa, thank you for taking time in the midst of this busy conference—you’ve got meetings galore and a lot of things going on and sharing your story in different settings. It’s such a joy to welcome you to Revive Our Hearts.

Lisa: Oh, well, thank you, Nancy, and thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share.

Nancy: Lisa, I’ve met a lot of women who are friends of yours involved in a program called Operation Outcry, where women are telling their stories about the devastating consequences of abortion. They’re saying, “We’re not going to keep this a secret anymore. We’re not going to cover this up. We’re going to let God use even the failures of our past as part of our life message.”

That’s part of making it redemptive. Not only has God redeemed your life from this past, but He’s now using you to touch and bless others.

A number of the women we’ve met and talked with came out of backgrounds where they did not know the Lord, did not have Christian families, came from dysfunctional families, and it’s maybe not surprising that their lives took the trajectory that they did. But as you and I have talked, you grew up in a background where you were exposed to the things of the Lord.

Tell us a little bit about your home background.

Lisa: Absolutely. I was born into a wonderful family with two godly parents. I was on the cradle roll in church from the moment that I was allowed to be in public after birth and grew up in church. My mom taught Sunday school and was a charter member of the church I grew up in. I was involved in all the activities growing up, all the way through youth group—really a wonderful background and upbringing.

I got married to a young man who was my high school sweetheart. He had some problems and was very abusive. I’d never had an experience like that in my life. It did something to me. That’s the best way I can describe it to you. Anytime you go through that type of abuse, physical and emotional abuse, it can change you.

I did get out of the marriage. I divorced, and I started making some bad choices.

Nancy: Let me back up here. You had come to know the Lord as a child?

Lisa: Yes. I gave my life to the Lord when I was eight years old. I can remember hearing the voice of God when I was as little as four years old.

Nancy: So you had a time of seeking the Lord and walking with Him.

Lisa: Absolutely, absolutely, and I even taught in high school. I was involved with Campus Life. I taught a Bible study group in my high school. I was very, very close to the Lord. So this period of time when I walked away, it was a choice I made to start walking away from Him and start making bad choices.

So I was dating a man and was sexually active with him, and I wasn’t married.

Nancy: And by this time you’re . . .

Lisa: By that time I was—I started dating him when I was twenty-two – twenty-three years old.

Nancy: Did your parents have any knowledge of what kind of lifestyle you were involved in?

Lisa: No, absolutely not. I was not living at home anymore. I already had one child from my first marriage. I did have my oldest, and I was living on my own. They had no idea what was going on in my life, but I was doing things I shouldn’t be doing, and I got pregnant when I was twenty-four.

Nancy: Did you tell your parents then?

Lisa: No, absolutely not.

Nancy: How far were you living from home?

Lisa: In the same city—not far at all. I spoke with them. I had a very close relationship with them, but they had no idea what was happening.

When I took the pregnancy test, I remember, I was just—I couldn’t believe it. I told my boyfriend, and the first words out of his mouth were, “You’re not having it, are you?”

Nancy: It?

Lisa: It. I looked at him, and I said, “Well, I guess not.”

Nancy: What was going through your mind?

Lisa: I think I was shocked. On one hand I believe that I knew he didn’t want this to happen, so I wasn’t too surprised about that. But the other part of me was that I really felt that need for him to step up and say, “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to take care of you, and I’m going to take care of the baby.”

I think every woman who gets pregnant—no matter whether you’re married or not—you’re depending on that. The way God created it in marriage is for your husband to be there to support you and to be there for you. Of course, I didn’t have that because it wasn’t right to begin with.

All my friends had told me, “Lisa, you can’t have another child on your own.”

Nancy: Had you ever walked through this with any of your friends who’d had abortions?

Lisa: I did. When I was in college, I had several friends who’d had abortions, but they didn’t want to talk about it a lot.

Nancy: And now that you are in this situation, they’re telling you it’s going to be fine.

Lisa: They’re telling me, “Go have the abortion. It’s going to be fine. It’s really not that big of a deal.”

So I didn’t feel like I had any support system there. My parents . . . I was so ashamed of getting pregnant outside of marriage. The shame was so heavy there because of what my upbringing was, I was terrified to tell them. I didn’t feel I had any option to do that.

Nancy: What did you think would happen?

Lisa: I don’t know if it was the judgment, feeling like they would be upset with me disappointing them. It’s been some time ago, so I don’t really remember all the thoughts that were going through my head. There was a great deal of fear of how my parents would take this because of who they were and how I was taught. I knew better.

So I fell into the lies. I bought into the lies. When I share my testimony publically in a lot of other places, especially in church, I tell them, “I was using abortion to cover up my original sin.” So I used one sin to cover up the first sin I’d committed, which was having sex outside of marriage. I shouldn’t have been doing that.

Nancy: Yes.

Lisa: And there was a consequence to that. I got pregnant. Then instead of saying, “Okay, I’ve made this mistake, but I need to deal with this consequence the way God would expect me to deal with this consequence,” I used abortion to cover up that sin.

Nancy: Which is really the alternative to repentance, dealing with it God’s way.

Lisa: Yes.

Nancy: It’s interesting that at each point where we do sin, God gives us the possibility of repentance and to receive His grace. God gives grace to the humble, but that is where we face a choice..

Lisa: I didn’t allow myself to identify with the baby, and most women who are going to have an abortion don’t. I don’t think anybody wants to have an abortion.

Nancy: Since you’d already had a child, you knew this was a child, if you’d stopped to think about it.

Lisa: Yes.

Nancy: But you couldn’t let yourself do that.

Lisa: When I had my abortion, I was eight weeks pregnant. So what I was told, not only by the abortion facility but all of my friends, was that if you do it early, it’s okay. If you do it early, it’s okay.

I think that’s what I wanted to hear because I was so scared, and I needed the problem fixed.

Lisa: So we went to the abortion facility, and it was like any other facility that you would walk in. It looked normal. You went through the normal admission procedures of filling out papers, which, unfortunately, I didn’t read real closely.

Then I was called in with five other women into a room which they called counseling. A woman was talking to us about reproductive health, about birth control, about STDs, and the only thing she told us about abortion was that it’s just a blob of tissue and it’s just a quick, simple, easy procedure—twenty minutes, and you never have to think about it again. It confirmed for me: This is no big deal.

They did do a sonogram, but they didn’t want to let me see the screen. I told her I did want to see. I said, “Please. I’ve already had one child. I’ve had a sonogram before. May I see it?”

She kind of sighed and said, “Okay.”

So she rubbed my stomach again with the probe, and she clicked some buttons. Then she turns the screen to me, and the she points to a white dot on the screen. She says, “That’s all it is. It’s just a dot.”

I thought, Okay, I can do this.

I didn’t see a baby, and what I know now is that she wasn’t showing me my baby. I don’t know what she had on the screen, but she wasn’t showing me a baby.

Nancy: That just demonstrates again the deception in this whole industry.

Lisa: A lot of lies and deception all the way through.

I was then taken into the room where the procedure was to take place, and this is where it was just unbelievable. It was different than any other room in the facility. It was dark. It was cold. The windows were boarded up.

She put me up on this metal table, and they’re all preparing in the room—there’s several people in there. She puts a mask over my face to administer medication that was supposed to relax me, but it wasn’t relaxing me. I was terrified.

I won’t go into all the gory details for your listeners, but I can tell you it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was just horrific. It was a nightmare.

I remember lying on that table, and that’s when I had that moment. I cried out to God, and I said, “Please forgive me for what I’m doing. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that I’m here, that I’ve come to this.”

As they helped me to get up off the table, blood poured out all over the floor, and the nurse was yelling at me that I was making a mess on her floor. I was shaking, and I was weak. They helped me to get dressed and then took me to another room which was called recovery. That room was then bright again like any other facility that you would walk into. There were recliners with snack trays lined up, and there were girls on either side of where I was sitting, curled up in fetal positions, crying in pain.

I remember my hands were in fists, and I was trying to stand as upright as I could, because I wanted them to know that I was okay so I could get out of there. I was desperate to get out.

I remember thinking right then and there, I will never set foot in this place again.

When I left the abortion facility, I was in a lot of pain. I rested for a while. That day I had been dishonest with my mother. She had my child—he was there—and . . .

Nancy: What did you tell her you were doing that day?

Lisa: Some activity with my friend. I don’t remember exactly what I told her, but it was not the truth, obviously.

I was gone all day and my mom had called and wanted to know when I was coming to pick up my son, and she invited me for dinner. I remember thinking, Okay, that’s fine. I’ll come to dinner.

So from that moment, that’s when I began wearing a mask that lasted years. I have a very close family, and they had no idea anything was wrong with me. I went to dinner that night like nothing had happened.

Nancy: Wow.

Lisa: The following week was when I began a life that was even worse than what I’d lived before. I was in the night clubs, drinking. Drugs were offered. I began sampling drugs. I was doing anything I could do to numb the pain I was in. I didn’t realize at the time it was from the abortion. I don’t think I had a conscious thought about it. It was something I was just doing.

Nancy: Lisa, as I’ve talked with a number of women here at this pro-life conference, I’ve heard this over and over and over again. They had the abortion. Obviously there was, in most of the cases, some promiscuity that led up to that. But then what you’ve just said I’ve heard repeated—got into drugs, into drinking, into the party life, and into greater promiscuity. Why does that seem such a common progression there?

Lisa: Well, abortion kills your soul, and your self-esteem just plummets. You carry so much guilt. You’re punishing yourself. I was self destructing, and I couldn’t stop. You want to numb that pain that you feel. You don’t know what that pain is, and you don’t know why you have that pain, but you’re doing whatever you can to escape that. When you use drugs and alcohol, you are high, and you don’t have to be in that space of dealing with whatever that guilt and shame is you’re carrying, and mine was from abortion.

There was greater promiscuity. My relationship with my boyfriend ended almost immediately. I couldn’t stand him after that, and I just started making more bad choices. I was very blessed not to have gotten pregnant again under those circumstances. A lot of women who experience abortion experience repeat abortions because they do go into a promiscuous lifestyle that’s even more so than what got them pregnant to begin with. They get pregnant again, and then they find themselves in abortion facilities again, and it becomes a cycle.

Nancy: And all of this is going on, and your parents still don’t know about your lifestyle.

Lisa: They have no idea. They have no idea that I’m partying. They have no idea that something’s wrong with me.

I began suffering from depression and panic attacks, for which I had to take medication. I’d never had those problems before. The only thing I didn’t do was attempt suicide. I was never suicidal. I never wanted to take my life. Many women come to that point where they just don’t want to live anymore. It’s hard to live with yourself when you’ve taken the life of your own child.

I went into the deepest, darkest waters I could get into to hide my sin, to hide my shame and my guilt, but I was still connected. God didn’t forget about me.

He began to reel me into Him slowly. I started letting to of some of the things that weren’t good in my life. I did start going back to church, and then finally, one day, it was like, “I can’t live that kind of life anymore.”

My Sunday school teacher invited me to come to her Bible study, and I began going. It was an interesting Bible study. I certainly could identify with it.

Nancy: What were some of the topics or themes—the point was to help post-abortive women?

Lisa: Absolutely.

Nancy: So what kinds of themes did they address?

Lisa: Well, first just dealing with what you had done and identifying with that sin, dealing with anger issues.

Nancy: So you needed to call this a sin? You needed to identify it that way?

Lisa: You have to admit that it’s a sin. You have to confess that it’s a sin. It’s the only way you can be redeemed.

Nancy: And this study, it’s Forgiven and Set Free—that’s the study?

Lisa: Yes.

Nancy: We’ve recommended this study to women who need to deal with this issue. Does it point you to Christ?

Lisa: Absolutely. That’s the only way.

Nancy: Apart from Christ there really is no way to deal with those issues

Lisa: That's correct. And you have to get that out. For women who experience abortion, you internalize all of it, and you implode. Everything goes inside. Walking through that Bible study you are unloading it. You're talking about it, you're confessing it. Once you can walk through those steps of forgiveness and receiving that, then you are set free! That's why it is call Forgiven and Set Free. You are no longer held in bondage to that.

Nancy: Was this course for you, was there a dramatic point of awakening, restoration? Or was it more like a gradual healing process?

Lisa: It was gradual. It was a gradual process, and I’m still healing today. You realize that the consequences of abortion are lifelong. I am forgiven and I am set free, but those consequences will always be there. I still think about it all the time. Everyday I think about it because I do this work; it’s what I do with my life.

But it’s also one of those things that you discover things along the way. People who experience abortion tend to block out a lot of things to protect themselves.

Nancy: Through all this process did there come a point where you talked to your parents about this?

Lisa: Yes. Well, my father I never did. He passed away before I started speaking about it. I work for the Justice Foundation, and I’m the director of outreach for Operation Outcry. In that capacity I speak out a lot. I do a lot of medium on radio and television.

I have a daughter that was about ten at the time. She was in school, and I didn’t want to disrupt school, so I hadn’t shared with her yet.

But I knew God was going to start putting me in a place where I was going to start speaking publicly, and I was going to have to share. My mother was a lot older and honestly I was hoping that maybe she could go on to be with the Lord without ever knowing. You just don’t want to cause that pain to your parents.

Abortion hurts the whole family. It doesn’t just affect you. It affects everyone in the family. I really wanted to spare her that. But I ended up sharing with her because I was going to go testify at a legislative hearing, and I needed her to understand why I was leaving and what I was doing.

And I was crying and I told her, “I’m so sorry.”

Nancy: Was this face to face?

Lisa: Face to face. And she looked at me. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were teared up. She put her arms around me and she says, “Lisa don’t you know how much your father and I love you? We would have done anything to help you, and we would have helped you with that baby. I’m so sorry that you had to go through that.”

There were none of the things that I thought was going to take place. None of the, “How could you do that?” The things I was afraid of. It was a beautiful moment. It was a very close bonding time with my mother. It was very, very good. So I’m very thankful that I shared with her before she passed away.

I have shared with my daughter, and I’ve not shared with my younger six-year-olds because they know what I do, but they don’t get it. They don’t understand exactly all of it. I’ll sit them down when they’re older and explain to them.

It’s important especially since I do speak out. You can’t do that and not let your whole family know. They need to hear it from you. It’s also a real huge part of healing because you’re not holding that secret inside you.

Nancy: There’s another important issue there too, and that is when we’re hiding, whether it’s abortion or any other sin, that’s pride. Pride keeps us at a distance from God. So walking in transparent honesty is an expression of humility. And what does God do to people who humble themselves? He gives grace.

It’s the grace that we need to deal with the guilt, the shame, the negative consequences. Which isn’t to say, as you reminded us, that all the consequences go away. But there is the grace of God that comes flowing into our lives as we’re willing to humble ourselves and to step out into the light.

Lisa: Absolutely. When I think about all those feelings of fear for people to know, my mother to know, and different ones and to see it was okay, it makes me feel good. It creates a lot of regret that I didn’t go to them to begin with. I wish I had gone to them to begin with.

But the good thing that has come out of it is that God has taken the darkest part of my life, the most painful thing that’s happened in my life, and He’s turned it around for good.

Every time I speak I tell people, “If just one woman is spared the pain that I have experienced, if one woman can find the healing that I have found, then it’s worth it. I’ll shout if from the rooftops.” I’ll share wherever I’m asked to share. Because every time we speak and let people know that we’ve had these experiences, if they’ve had that experience also they think, “Oh, I thought I was the only one."

Nancy: Lisa speak to a woman who’s listening right now who has grown up in the church as you did, maybe Christian parents, maybe have come to know the Lord as a child, made wrong choices, was sexually active, got pregnant, chose to have an abortion, was afraid, was ashamed, has not told anybody. And they’re listening to you tell your story. Speak to that person now.

Lisa: You’re not alone. And Jesus is waiting for you to come to Him with this. There is hope, and there is healing.

I want you to know you’re not alone. The feelings you’ve had that you’ve had locked up that you thought you suffered with all this time by yourself, that you couldn’t talk to anybody about, I understand. There are hundreds and thousands of us across this nation who have had the same experience, but we’ve walked through abortion recovery, and we don’t suffer anymore.

Nancy: There is hope.

Lisa: There is hope. Absolutely.

Nancy: Hope through Christ.

Dannah: The beauty of God’s healing forgiveness and love is something you and I should never get over. The word “bask” comes to mind. Let’s spend today basking in the goodness of God!

You just heard Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth in conversation with Lisa Dudley. There’s more to their conversation than we have time for this week. You can hear the extended interview at ReviveOurHearts.com.

That website is also where you’ll find more information about our newest Women of the Bible study. This one is on Rahab. She had a past she wasn’t proud of. But in faith she reached out to the God of Israel, and He delivered her from certain judgment. Really, that’s a story all of us can relate to, isn’t it.

This month, we’ll send you a copy of the new study Rahab: Tracing the Thread of Redemption as our way of saying “Ttanks so much” when you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. It can be large or small, the amount doesn’t matter. But we’ll send you this study to thank you. 

I want to remind you that for each of the series in the Women of the Bible we have a podcast and a videocast you can use to further your study. Again, all the information is at ReviveOurHearts.com. If you’d rather pick up the phone, we'd love to talk to you at 1–800–569–5959.

Rahab isn’t the only woman in the Bible who needed God to change her. On Monday, Janet Parshall will talk to us about the Samaritan woman at the well. Her thirst wasn't just physical, as she found out in her conversation with Jesus. 

Have a great weekend! 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to promote life and healing. It’s an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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