membrane surrounding me. Then in a flash the horror of truth flooded me. My mother was trying to kill me.
IN GOD’S HANDS
At that moment I saw two huge protective hands come together and form a wall around me. When the fingers interlocked between me and the sharp object, the frightful blackness gave way to a soft bathing white light, and I felt safe. I knew they were God’s hands. A voice that belonged to the hands said, “Just as I was there for you when you fell off the horse, and just as I was there to protect you in your car accident, so I was there right in the beginning to protect you when your mother tried to abort you.”
Then as I lay in my mother’s womb in total peace, secure in God’s protection, Jesus appeared to me. He lifted me out and laid me in the crook of His arm. There were other babies lined up on His arm with me. He walked us into a room where Father God was sitting in Heaven and presented us to Him. God put His hands over us and kissed us. “These ones need a special blessing because they are unwanted. They have been rejected and will have much rejection.”
After we were blessed, Jesus walked us back and returned us into the womb, but He didn’t leave. He stayed with me in Ingeborg’s womb with God’s protective presence wrapped around me.
Until that night I didn’t know that my mother had tried to abort me. As the vision faded, I lay on the floor, shocked. I wanted to talk to my dad. As soon as I left the meeting, I phoned him. “Dad,” I asked, “did Mom try to abort me?”
He gasped. “Who told you that?”
“God did. He told me a lot of other things too. I’m coming over, and I need you to tell me the whole truth.” Later, as we talked, he hung his head and acknowledged, “Yes, your mother tried to abort you. Three times.”
I have since seen photos taken during abortions. They show the baby in the womb pushing as far from the intruding object as possible. Also, the video The Silent Scream (www.silentscream.org) depicts the abortion of an 11-week-old fetus in terrifying detail through the use of real-time ultrasound. As the abortionist’s suction tip invades the womb, the child cringes and rears in an attempt to avoid the instrument. Her mouth is visibly open in a “silent scream.” Her heart rate increases dramatically to 200 beats per minute as she senses aggression and moves away in a heartrending attempt to escape the instrument.
I didn’t have this insight when I lay on the floor at the meeting, but that is exactly what I experienced in my mother’s womb. But for the grace of God…
Thus began my life on earth. I was rejected by my mother, not just before birth but, devastatingly so, afterward as well. Not so with my dad. He could hardly wait for me to arrive.
DADDY’S GIRL
In those days men weren’t allowed in the delivery room, but my dad worked a 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital, right beside the Women’s College Hospital. He knew the doctors, and the doctors knew him and gave him permission to be in the delivery room when I was born. He donned a gown and helped me make my entrance into the world. When I arrived, he couldn’t contain his delight. He held me, kissed me and doted on me.
“My beautiful one!” he exclaimed to me as I lay on his arm. “You are ma belle! I want to call her Ma Belle,” he announced to Ingeborg. “It means ‘my beautiful one’ in French.”
“And what’s that going to be in English?” my mother objected. “It’ll be Mabel. No! I don’t want that name.”
“Fine,” he conceded. “We’ll turn Ma Belle around and call her Belma.”
Even back then I adored my daddy. I was his little girl, always excited to meet him when he came home from work. He played with me all evening, took me in his arms and danced around the room. It really irritated Ingeborg. She was disinterested in me, but she didn’t want him to play with me. She was jealous of my dad’s affection toward me, and it caused constant fighting in our home.
Rather than bringing joy to the marriage, my birth increased tension between them. The competition was fierce, with each wanting me to speak their language. My dad speaks nine languages, one of which is Turkish. When he tried to teach me a word in Turkish, she would interject, “No! The word is…” and she repeated it in German.
A year after I was born, Ingeborg got pregnant again. My dad arrived home one day to find blood everywhere. She had successfully aborted a baby boy—my brother. Dad rushed her to the hospital, where she remained for two weeks. When she was released, he urged her go to Germany, visit her parents, rest and recuperate. “Have a little holiday,” he suggested. “Take Belma with you and stay a couple of weeks.”
I was 26 months old at the time, and my life was about to take a new direction.
Pause and Reflect
Belma had a vision of being in her mother’s womb. Ingeborg felt rejected by her mother when she was sent away to live in northern Germany. Often, those who feel rejected reject others. It can create a painful cycle of rejection.
God says He covers us in the womb: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13, ESV). “For he will conceal me…when troubles come; he will hide me in his sanctuary. He will place me out of reach” (Psalm 27:5, NLT).
Have you pushed anybody away in order to avoid the pain of rejection or abandonment?
What are some steps you can take to restore that relationship?
Chapter 3
Rooted in Love
For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the Lord will take me in.
PSALM 27:10, ESV
My mom and I arrived in Germany to visit my grandparents in the month of April. Ingeborg, depressed and unhappy, concocted a bizarre tale that she had divorced my father. It was another blow to my grandparents. They loved him and had placed his pictures throughout their house. Not realizing the true source of her depression and emotional instability and believing she was now on her own, they suggested she leave the baby with them until she recovered and put her life in order. The idea must have been more than acceptable to Ingeborg, who didn’t want the baby in the first place.
“Where is my daughter?” my dad asked, bewildered, when he met her at the airport.
“I left her in Germany,” Ingeborg stated.
Fear and helplessness gripped Bari as his mind processed what Ingeborg was saying. “But I’m her father, and I want her,” he stammered.
Ingeborg shrugged and retorted, “She’s better off there. Her grandparents love her more than you do.”
Bari’s dismay turned to anger. “I’m buying you a ticket right now. You are going right back to Germany to get my daughter and bring her back to me.”
Dad bought the ticket on the spot. Ingeborg got on a plane that night without having left the Toronto airport, flew back to Germany and then returned to Canada without me.
This time when Bari met her at the airport, she announced, “I want a divorce.”
“I
