The Girl Who Saw the Bear

It's supposed to rain.
What if I stand there for a whole hour and don't talk to a single person?
Who wants to have a conversation about abortion anyways?
If only I wasn't alone.

These are all thoughts that entered my head on the morning of February 6th. I had committed to an hour of standing around on Mason's Fairfax campus near a group of pro-life activists. They bring signs with them with grotesque abortion images and aggressive messages like "THIS COULD HAVE BEEN YOU."

I know these people. They mean well. The students on campus know them too. They know the routes to take on campus to avoid seeing the images on days when their friends text them and warn them. "That group is back. You might want to find another way to class ;)" I've heard people say that to one another.

So I go to campus on those days. To be a go-between. I stand near their "tunnel of horror" and catch students on the other side. Most of those conversations start with common ground about dislike of the signs and we transition into a productive conversation with love and respect. That was my goal that day. I walked onto campus in a positive mood that threatened to wear away as I got closer to the signs and my heart started to pound. Dark clouds covered the sky.

As I walked up, I made eye contact with a girl walking my way and in the blink of an eye I made a decision and got her attention. "Hey, did you just come from the direction of the signs?" Ariel* immediately groaned and nodded. We agreed that the images are horrible. I told her, "I know those people, and I have conversations about abortion all the time, but I try to do it in a way that is respectful and involves asking questions." She looked relieved and said, "Yeah, I could do without the yelling." I asked Ariel about her opinion of abortion. She told me she only had a short while to talk and we used that time to discover our similar and differing views. 

At some point in our conversation we discussed scenarios where someone might try to save someone's life if they were in danger. "If a small child was drowning and you passed by, would you jump in and try to save them?" "Not if I couldn't swim," Ariel said firmly. "You wouldn't even try?" Her answer was, "Of course not, why kill myself trying to save them?" Her argument was that a woman who was too poor to care for a child should be allowed to kill it so she doesn't have to go farther into debt. She was adamant that children in the womb were disposable for any reason before birth. Conversations like that are discouraging, but it's hard to leave them. We parted on good terms despite our differences and my challenge to her to reconsider her view.

I walked back toward the group, but they were already tearing down their display. Had I just had my only conversation for the day? We prayed together and, before they left, their leader left me with a bear. It's a small stuffed animal with a tag tied to it. The tag reads: "Will you adopt me? My child was aborted and I never got the chance to love or be loved. Please take me home and love me." It has a web address and a hashtag and that's it. That message is supposed to communicate to some unwitting person that abortion is murder and they should care. I took the bear skeptically, but with the sense that I could use it somehow.

But how? I wasn't ready to leave and I wanted to process my earlier conversation, so I sat down on a bench in the middle of the plaza...

I set the bear on the ground in front of me and stared at it. A few rain drops fell. I prayed, "God, I'm here and I really want to have another conversation. Please use me. I've got this bear and some time before class. Help me to trust you." I zoned out, music playing in one earphone, people-watching and re-playing my conversation with Ariel in my head until I heard: 

"Hey!" 

I looked up. 

"You dropped your bear," she pointed.

The girl, whose name was Laura, gestured at the bear and I looked at it as though I had never seen it before. My bear had fallen over, looking dejected. I picked it up and said thank you. 

"What's that tag it has?" she asked. I showed her the tag and she read it. Her face contorted into an expression of pain and confusion. "Oh, oh. Wow, that's so sad." I asked her what she thought of the message and she said the most profound thing: "Love is something you want to give freely. I feel like this bear is trying to manipulate me into loving it, and that's not how love works." I agreed wholeheartedly and she asked me what I thought of the bear. I told her about how I had been given the bear by someone with good intentions. "I'm pro-life," I said, "but I don't feel like this is the right way to communicate that to someone."

Laura looked excited. "I agree! I'm pro-life too." She told me that she wouldn't know what to believe about abortion if it wasn't for her faith. For her, the only thing that mattered was what God said on the subject. I got so excited. Through my prayer and my bear, God had brought me a convicted pro-life Christian. We compared notes for the next half hour on our journeys of faith, learning to trust God and know Him, and how that understanding of our Maker permeated our perspectives on all things. We kept agreeing and learning more about each other, getting more and more excited to discover another passionate Christian on our campus.

When we exchanged phone numbers, she took the conversation one step further. "If I can be completely transparent," she said, "I saw you first and I asked God if I could talk to you. Then I saw your bear and I thought, 'I'll just make it all about the bear and see where it goes from there.'" I laughed and could have cried. I confessed, "I sat here to have a conversation and I prayed and asked God to use me and the bear!" We laughed. We hugged. We made plans to meet up later. Only then did it start to rain.

Leaving campus, I couldn't contain my excitement. I called my best friend. I called my mom. "This is why I'm here," I told them.

When I came to George Mason last fall, I had two goals: 1) Survive classes. 2) Form a pro-life group. Making friends and discovering who was willing to join me in this struggle has been harder than calculus.

That morning, I prayed with one of my mentors for courage. Courage to talk to people and be more forthcoming with them about my purpose. A few hours later, God gave me one person to talk to about the issue, and another to encourage me. 

God, thank you for Laura and Ariel. Thank you for answering my prayers, encouraging my heart, and showing me that you're with me even when I feel alone.

I am not alone.