Have you ever been absolutely convinced you knew what was going on, only to find out later you were working with about half the information?
Boy, I sure have!
In fact, in this week’s episode of The Worthy Womb Podcast, I tell one of the most embarrassing stories of my life to prove it. My heart was in the right place. My compassion was real. My intentions were good, but my information? Well...let’s just say I was working with a few missing pieces. The story itself is funny now, but what God showed me through it wasn’t funny at all.
We do this with people all the time. We see one decision, one reaction, one mistake…. One ugly chapter, and then we start filling in the blanks. We decide what she was thinking. We decide why she did it. We decide what kind of woman would make a decision like that. Before long, we aren’t just judging what happened - we’re judging her!
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that kind of judgment, you know how deeply it can hurt, but what you may not know is that the most painful judgment comes from what we impart unto ourselves.
When Someone Only Knows One Chapter
That’s one reason I’ve been spending time in the story of Tamar in Genesis 38. Tamar’s story is messy, and if you just look at one singular painful detail, you can quickly form some strong opinions about her. The problem is that you would be making a decision based on half of the picture, the worst half, actually. In 1 Samuel 16:7, we are reminded that people look at what they can see on the outside, but God looks at the heart. He sees what happened before everybody else started talking. He sees the pressure nobody knew about, the fear nobody understood, the pain nobody bothered to ask about, and the pieces that never made it into the conversation.
We see the snapshot. God sees the whole woman.
That matters when we’re talking about abortion because maybe somebody knows what happened, but they don’t know everything surrounding it. They know one chapter, and somewhere along the way, they decided they knew the whole woman. If that happened to you, you may know exactly what it feels like to be Tamar.
But there’s another side to this conversation, and this one stings a little more.
What If You’ve Been Doing It Too?
There was a time when I had some pretty strong opinions about women affected by abortion. I thought I understood. I knew what I believed. I knew what I thought she should do. And I certainly knew what I thought I would never do….until life put me on the other side of that judgment.
Suddenly, I wasn’t standing outside somebody else’s story looking in. I was living inside it. That experience changed the way I looked at other women, but eventually I realized something else had happened. I had stopped pointing the finger at her...and turned it straight toward myself.
Maybe you know that feeling too? You believe Jesus forgives. You know what Scripture says. You would sit across the table from another woman and tell her without hesitation that the blood of Jesus is enough, that she is still loved, that God can redeem her story, and that her life still has purpose; however, when it comes to you? Somehow the rules change.
You hold yourself in harsher judgment because you “knew better.” You ask, “How could you have ended up THERE?” “What does this bad decision say about you as a person?”
When Self-Judgment Starts Sounding Like Truth
Maybe nobody around you is calling you those names, but somewhere along the way, you started believing them for yourself: failure, bad mother, dirty, unworthy, damaged, disqualified, unforgivable.
When you live under those labels long enough, they stop sounding like accusations and start feeling like truth. That is where healing after abortion has to go deeper than simply knowing, “Jesus forgave me.”
You can believe you are forgiven and still live like you are condemned. You can love Jesus and still expect punishment. You can read your Bible, pray, serve, show up at church, and do all the things you think a “good Christian woman” should do while quietly believing you still have something to prove. That kind of striving never stays contained. Sooner or later, it starts bleeding into every part of your life.
Maybe It’s Time to Look Again
This week on The Worthy Womb Podcast, we’re finishing the final piece of my W.O.M.B. Protocol: B — Become Who He Says.
We’re sitting down with Tamar’s story and talking about judgment, self-accusation, and what happens when one painful part of your life starts defining the whole woman.
But we’re not stopping with another Bible lesson you can nod your head at and forget before today is over. No ma’am, We’re getting practical here because information without application is just entertainment.
I’m going to show you how to begin recognizing the old verdicts you’ve been living under, how to identify the names you’ve unknowingly been answering to, and what you can start doing when that self-accusation cycle fires back up.
Look, knowing Jesus forgave you is one thing. Learning how to live like a forgiven woman is another.
And if you just read that sentence and thought, Amy, that’s me. I know I’m forgiven, but something still isn’t changing, then I really want you to pull up a seat for this one.
Listen to the newest episode of The Worthy Womb Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you’ve missed the previous episodes in the W.O.M.B. Protocol™, you can catch up here
And if you already know something from your abortion encounter is still showing up in your marriage, motherhood, relationship with God, emotional reactions, or simply the way you see yourself, but you honestly don’t know what your next step should be, I invite you to book a FREE discovery call with me.
We’ll spend a few minutes talking about you—where you are in your healing journey, what keeps showing up, and whether the W.O.M.B. Protocol™ may be the right next step for what you need.
You don’t need to have it all figured out before you come. Sometimes healing starts with being willing to look at the story again—not through somebody else’s judgment, not through your own old verdict, but through the eyes of the One who knows the whole woman.
One chapter may be part of your story. It does not get to tell you who you are.
