Living to Love

** A clearer and more updated stance on abortion has been posted. Click here to read it 🙂

So obviously I haven\’t posted on here in a while. Which directly relates to the breaking of many of my New Year\’s resolutions. (I know, I\’m pathetic.) Any way, even though I wasn\’t posting, I was still taking pictures (some specifically for the blog!) and still planning things out in my head. In light of the March for Our Lives yesterday, I thought today my be a good time to talk about what \”Pro-Life\” means to me and share a bit about my experience from the March for Life in January.

Before the shooting in February, I spent a few days in Washington D.C. for the fourth year in a row to March for Life. While the ideas behind this march is to work for a change against the abortion industry, just like the March for Our Lives is a march against gun violence. Every march has been different because of the different people with me, and the inability to create the same moment twice, but mostly because of my mindset at that particular point in time. This year, I decided to read The Walls are Talking by Abby Johnson as a supplement to my experience, and let me say, it really expanded my knowledge on the abortion issue and helped me really understand the true purpose as to why I was marching. Don\’t get me wrong, I was still marching because every life is precious and everyone deserves a chance to live life to the fullest. But at the end of the day, I was marching so everyone could receive the chance to live; however, I am living to make everyone feel loved, in addition.

I\’m sorry if the previous paragraph didn\’t make any sense, so excuse me as I explain further: While I was in D.C. the snapchat story for the March for Life called it \”The Anti-Abortion March.\” When I first read the headline, I was taken aback, just as a few of my other marchers, that they had titled it as such because we so often refer to it at the \”Pro-Life March.\” It was only after a lot of thoughts and consideration, I realized that they title simply stated the facts: we were marching against pro-abortion laws. While many pro-life people were marching that January day, we weren\’t marching for better care for those in need, we weren\’t marching against bullying, we weren\’t marching against violence, we were marching against abortion. There are many issues that Pro-Life people are working for or against. As a \”pro-life person,\” I work to respect everyone and try to make their life a life worth living. Being pro-life is more than marching/saying you are against abortion; it\’s loving people for who they are, helping others without anything in return, being kind to people you encounter. It\’s taking care of babies as well as the elderly. To put it simply, it\’s loving unconditionally. I may have been in Washington to march against abortion, but I saw so many pro-life acts and so much love being shared among people. For example, my friend bought this little boy a keychain in the Lego Store as a thank you for helping her pick out a present for the little boys she babysits. Not every act of kindness is done through gift giving, but in this moment many hearts were warmed. It is through kindness that we achieve joy. If I\’m being honest, I really wanted to march yesterday, but I knew I wouldn\’t be able to for a couple of reasons: one, I didn\’t have the money to travel there and two, I had other commitments I had already made. In light of the Florida school shooting and the uprise in activism, many people have started questioning school safety and many of my teachers have asked me if I ever felt worried about a shooting happening at my school. Plain and simple, the answer is yes. During a school assembly about safety, I police man told us that many people think something like this could never happen in their city, but that we (the school students and citizens of Lafayette) knew because of the shooting at a movie theater a couple years ago. In addition, I grew up in Colorado, where I was forever reminded of the Columbine Shooting and the horrible events that occurred that day. I\’ve been surround by the shock of these tragedies my entire life, I know it can happen anywhere. Because of my anxiety, I never really feel safe anywhere and have thus thought about how a shooting, an act of terror, anything can happen anywhere. But it is through hope, joy and kindness that I am able to live my life without a crippling fear about what\’s out there.

Okay, so I hope that didn\’t sound like a rant, but there\’s my thoughts on everything 🙂 I\’m also sorry that it ended on such a negative note. Regardless of everything, I think it\’s so important to be kind and to love. I hope you love this week, both in the sense that week is great for you and that you love others. Happy Sunday!

Love, 

               Jacquelyn