Because God Was There. Belma Diana Vardy

change in Ingeborg. She loved it and became excited. Her life in Canada had proved unfruitful and she had no reason to return, but Bari could not be persuaded. He didn’t want to be “bought,” and he refused the offer. Again, my grandparents’ hopes were dashed. They grieved, and so did Ingeborg.

      Years later Bari confessed he had regretted his decision to reject my grandparents’ offer. He blamed himself for altering the course of their lives for nothing more than foolish, youthful pride. He believed that had he consented to live in Germany, things would have been different. That was certainly Ingeborg’s contention. Upon their return to Canada, Ingeborg fell into a deep depression.

      Who is to say how things might have turned out had Bari and Ingeborg remained in Germany? Ingeborg’s personality, rooted in woundedness, would have had the same effect on her relationships whether in Germany or in Canada. Also, a marriage such as theirs, founded on manipulation, was not destined to last.

      Bari wanted to introduce his bride to his family in Turkey. He proposed a two-year trial visit, suggesting that Ingeborg might want to settle there, but she refused. It was her revenge for his decision to leave Germany. “I’ll go with you to Russia; I’ll go with you to China; but I’ll never go to Turkey,” she insisted. Instead, she became pregnant with me, and she wasn’t happy about it.

      Forty years later, in a most unusual way, I learned the truth—she hated me before I was born.

      REVELATION

      At that point in my adult life I had a close personal relationship with God and was attending a conference at a church in Toronto where God’s tangible presence was manifest. It was magnetic, irresistible and therapeutic. As people yielded to God, His Spirit filled them with love and healing.

      That’s what happened to me one evening. The pastor invited people to come forward for prayer, and I was drawn to respond. As he prayed for me, suddenly the Holy Spirit came over me in such a breathtaking, warm, powerful embrace of pure love that I couldn’t remain on my feet. My knees buckled and I sank to the floor. As I lay there I had a peaceful sense of being underwater. Puzzled at first, I tried to assess where I was because I lay curled in a fetal position. It seemed as if I was back in my mother’s womb. This may sound strange to some, but let me explain.

      When God gives one an unusual experience such as this, it’s either a resurrected memory or a vision. God allows it for His purposes so He can reveal something otherwise unknown to the individual. In my case, I experienced what is known as an open vision, through which God retrieved a memory for me of what happened before I was born.

      The vision of being in the womb was so real that I was totally oblivious to being on the floor in a meeting. I heard talking, but the voices were those of my mother and father arguing. It was as though I was right there with them. My mother was angry at my father because she was pregnant with me.

      Then the scene shifted. I became aware of a sharp object penetrating my safe space and coming toward me. As tiny as I was in the womb, I recognized danger, and terror gripped me. My fear was very real. I had nowhere to escape. I pushed as far away from the object as I could, but it jabbed toward me repeatedly. The jabs came and went, seeking to pierce the thin protective 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