But Norma McCorvey had a change of heart. In the early 1990s, she professed faith in Christ and has written two books affirming her pro-life position. In her second book, Won by Love (1998), she described her sudden awareness that the life in a mother’s womb is a baby, a child whom God loves:

When my conversion [to Christ] became public knowledge, I spoke openly to reporters about still supporting legalized abortion in the first trimester. The media was quick to use this to downplay the seriousness of my conversion, saying I typified the “general ambivalence” of our culture over abortion. But a few weeks after my conversion, I was sitting in [Operation Rescue’s] offices when I noticed a fetal development poster. The progression was so obvious, the eyes were so sweet. It hurt my heart, just looking at them.

I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. “Norma,” I said to myself, “they’re right.” I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that’s a baby! It’s as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth—that’s a baby!17

This chapter is not about abortion. Abortion is only the most visible symptom of a deeper disorder—the lost awareness that God loves life, including life in the womb. The point of this chapter is that God loved you as a truly human person even before you were born. Nothing but love can account for God’s seeing us and caring for us even before we were conceived, born, or had committed any sin.

Maintaining that big picture is important. Those who don’t believe they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by a God who has loved them before the beginning of time will have a hard time trusting that God’s love surrounds them when they face life’s challenges.

But if you believe that before you were born God lovingly strung together the days of your life from conception through eternity, then you have context for believing your life is ordered even to the point of using adversity to your eternal advantage. And that context is love.

God loved you before you were born. He loves you today. And your legacy is that He will love you forever.

THREE

God Carved His Love in Stone

The LORD came from Sinai,…

From His right hand

Came a fiery law for them.

Yes, He loves the people.

—DEUTERONOMY 33:2–3

Perhaps Ted Turner captured it best—this attitude that the Ten Commandments were given with the sole purpose of taking the fun out of life.