Listen to Jeff Joaquin and Jacob Barr talk about Jeff’s deep regret over his personal abortion story.
Summary
This is Jacob Barr, and I recently had a deeply moving conversation with Jeff Joaquin on the Pro-Life Team Podcast. Jeff shared his poignant story, starting from a painful decision he made in 1987 to agree to an abortion with his girlfriend at the time. This decision, made when he was just 17 and facing a promising football career, haunted him for years, leading to a path of self-destruction through substance abuse and a near-death experience.
Jeff’s journey to redemption began in his late thirties and early forties, marked by a significant spiritual conversion. He recounted his powerful experience of confession, where he confronted his past and found forgiveness and mercy from God. This marked a turning point in his life, leading him to become an active voice in the pro-life movement.
He emphasized the crucial role of empathy, understanding, and showing the mercy of God to those considering abortion. Jeff’s message is one of hope and transformation – illustrating how sharing personal stories of pain and redemption can have a profound impact on others. He stressed the importance of introducing those in crisis to the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, believing this to be the ultimate source of healing and change.
Jeff’s story is a testament to the power of forgiveness, the journey of healing, and the transformative impact of bringing one’s personal experiences to the forefront in the fight for life.
### Hashtags:
#ProLifeTransformation, #HealingFromAbortion, #MercyAndForgiveness, #SpiritualJourney, #HopeInCrisis, #PersonalTestimony, #RedemptionStory, #FaithInAction, #EmpathyAndUnderstanding, #ProLifeAdvocacy
Transcript
The transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
Jeff Joaquin :
Welcome to the pro-life Team Podcast. My name is Jeff Joaquin and we discussed today the decision that I made in 1987 to take the life of the unborn child in the womb of my girlfriend. See, I thought I could bury that issue for many years. But every time I looked out my back window and saw my neighbor playing with his son, soccer with his son, or drove by a baseball field and saw a father with his arm around his son, I realized that I may have buried that decision 35 years ago, but I’ll live with it for my whole life so, Jeff?
Jacob Barr :
Would you introduce yourself as if you were talking to a handful of executive directors of pricey clinics?
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah good afternoon Jacob Jeff Joaquin. I am husband of my beautiful wife, CMD of 23 years and father to Faith Mackenzie who is 20, and to my son Jonathan Andrew who would be 35 I was born and raised in Dartmouth, massachusetts and I spent the 1st 26 years of my life up there. And I spent the last 26 years of my life down here in Tampa, florida where I’m blessed to be the President and owner of JMJ site Development. So that’s a little bit about me, Jacob.
Jacob Barr :
Awesome so tell us about your pro-life story or yeah, tell us about your journey in the pro-life sphere.
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah, you know, Jacob, I again, born and raised and in Dartmouth, massachusetts, was raised by a very good Catholic Christian mother and father have an older brother, five years older than me and my parents our parents brought us up very well. You know, we went to church on Sunday we, you know, serve those in need had a great example for parents. When I tell my story, a lot of times people think that I must have grown up in a separated family and with abuse, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. My brother, when he got into high school, he’s five years older than me. So he was, I was in eighth, grade he was a senior in high school and he ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant. And that was a big stain on my family. My brother had to have a shotgun wedding and he went forward with having his child and got married and, you know, so he got quite a bit of a backlash, if you will, for that situation. So when I got into high school, you know, my mother told me, you know, point blank, Jacob, she said if you make the same kind of mistake your brother made, we’re going to castrate you. So i kind of went into my high school years with that sitting in my over my shoulder if you will. So I was very careful throughout my high school years and but senior year old around and I had a pretty significant relationship with my girlfriend at the time. And you know I got that phone call, you know, the third, you know third Saturday of July of 1987 i got a phone call from my girlfriend and she said, you know we have a problem and you know that problem was that she was pregnant. So I told her, I said, well give me 24 hours I’ll call you back and we’ll make a decision. And even though I was raised in a good Catholic Christian family Jacob, i didn’t consult God i just I needed to go off to college i had a football career in front of me so i couldn’t possibly be a father is what my thoughts were at that time. So I called her up the next day and told her we needed to get an abortion. So she set the appointment up and a week later we were driving to Providence, rhode island and, we you know, I pulled up to the poor cachet, the building, the woman’s Health Center it’s much of a joke as that is so that’s the name on the side of the building. And she asked me, you know, you’re going to come in with me. And you know, that was my second cowardly decision of the day anyways, was I didn’t even go in with my girlfriend. But I sat out in the parking lot, Jacob, and you know, it was a July of 1987 summertime, very hot. I didn’t have the air conditioning in my car and I was sweating bullets and I can remember thinking, hadn’t prayed to God. But this was the first time that I consulted him and I said to him, God, is this what Hell’s going to feel like? My girlfriend came out of the pregnancy clinic, excuse me, pregnancy clinic, Women’s Health Center, about an hour and a half later and I drove her home and 24 hours later I broke up with her. So I know you’re probably saying to yourself, Jeff, my question to you was, when did you join the pro-life movement? And believe it or not, that was the first day of me deciding whether or not life was important. And unfortunately for me, I borrowed 200$ from a complete stranger and, you know, excuse me from a friend to pay a complete stranger to take the life of my unborn child in the womb. I had denied my fatherhood and had sacrificed my son on the altar of convenience so that was the age of 17 i’m 53 now, but that was the beginning of my life in the, if you will, pro-life movement. I just didn’t know it yet. So to answer your question specifically, Jacob, when did I actually start to participate as a pro-life activist? That would be probably in my late thirties or early forties after, a you know a, rather a significant conversion process and then taking my grave sin that had happened 25 years before and confessing that in getting mercy from the God of salvation once I walked out of that confessional that day, I knew I had to be committed to life in all its ways, shapes and forms.
Jacob Barr :
So wow, so that’s sitting in the car it’s hot. Starting to pray. Breaking up with your girlfriend just and not much longer after that experience and everything that goes with it. Wow so tell us where, you know where or tell me where did you go from there like where did the story continue on to?
Jeff Joaquin :
Ok, front, you’re saying from 17 or from 42.
Jacob Barr :
From 17, like, where did you go from, you know, from experiencing that loss the abortion? Yeah what happened next?
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah, very good question. So what I ended up doing, you know, just like most men are able to do, Jacob, I buried that grave send deep, deep, dark inside me as deep as I could bury it. I built a huge wall around myself and then I just started self medicating, you know, alcohol, drugs, pornography. And in all of that culminated really in a in a prodigal son moment if you will, at the age of 24 where I had graduated from college and I had not gone on to the NFL because you know, quite frankly I had snorted my NFL career up my nose. But at the age of 24 after graduating, having a civil engineering degree and getting out into the workforce. But it was summertime at when I was 24 and a bunch of my friends who I went to college with you know came home for summertime and we met at the beach and we were having a big party and you know alcohol led to drugs led to an overconsumption of cocaine And I went home that night probably about 11 clock at night Jacob and I was lying on my parents den i still live with my parents at the time having a cocaine induced heart attack. And I remember calling my brother up and saying to my brother, you know, Mark, i’m sorry that I didn’t make it into the NFL. I’m sorry I haven’t been a good younger brother, but I’m going to die here tonight. I’m having a cocaine induced heart attack i’m lying on, you know, mom and dad’s den on the floor and their den and I’m going to die here tonight. And he said, Jeff, let me call 9-1-1 And I said to him, Mark, I said, no, don’t do that. I said if this Jesus Christ that mom and dad told us about is real, one or two things is going to happen. He’s either going to come down here and save me right now or I’m going to go meet him and spend eternity and damnation. And Jacob wrote about it just even before my brother hung up the phone i could feel a warm sensation going from head to toe. And all I remember is waking up the next morning on the side of my bed, asking God to put the pieces of my puzzle back together. See, I had thought that I had put the abortion behind me at 17, but the drugs and alcohol that I tried to medicate myself with after that abortion, not only did it ruin an NFL career, but it put me on death’s doorstep. So that was the immediate aftermath of the decision at 17 I essentially was on death ‘s doorstep trying to medicate myself, really, from the pain associated with that abortion at 17. So wow.
Jacob Barr :
What is? That’s AI love how God is like speaking, you know essentially, it’s just like the putting the pieces back together. So what happened you know, So what happened next what was, Where did it, Where did you go from there did God help restore you or heal you from some of those addictions or what yeah, What? What you know what came next?
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah, the in god’s in his infinite wisdom he writes so straight with crooked lions. The first piece of the puzzle that he put back together was soon thereafter that near, you know, cocaine induced heart attack i met my beautiful wife now of 23 years i met her probably around the age of 25 and you know, Jacob, I, you know being a two time all American football player, being six three two hundred and sixty pounds. You know my wife, she’s 5 foot three and she’s 120 pounds. And I can tell you this there hasn’t been a day in my life that I didn’t think that she could whooped me if she needed to you know and I say that in a in a nice and kind and loving way she That was the first step on my journey to recovery was my was God putting a woman, a loving, caring compassionate and tough woman in my life to set me straight and that’s exactly what she did and we moved down to Florida and we got married at the age of 30 and then you know soon thereafter Jacob just like any newlywed couple we wanted to have children and that’s really the next step of my journey back to God if you will it’s the process of trying to have a child in my early thirties And Jacob, you know, one failed pregnancy test after another failed pregnancy test, month after month, year after year. And I started saying to myself, you know, is this the God of the Old Testament, if you will, You know, was I one of the people? And, you know, in the time of the flood of Noah, was I an Egyptian and the, you know, with the plagues and the pestilence, was God punishing me for that little secret that I had kept, you know, fourteen fifteen years before? And but I can remember kneeling Jacob in the fertility clinic you know, we had to go see a fertility doctor. And I can remember kneeling in that clinic and saying to God, you know, God. I know I’ve never come to grips with that decision that I made at 17. But all I ask is your mercy and all I ask for you this to give me a child i don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl. Just please Lord, give me your child in that the decision Jacob, for us at the time was it was the IVF procedure which is a procedure that cost thirty five hundred dollars and in that for us it had a 75 % chance of success. And then there was the gift, procedure, GIFT it’s an acronym and that cost ten thousand dollars and had a 5 % chance of success. And you know, at that time in my early thirties, I knew very little about my faith, but I knew plenty about money. So that decision you would think would have been very easy for us, my wife and I. But we decided to take the High Road and that was to go with the procedure that had the lot a lot less chance of success and cost a lot more because you know, we’re Catholic, Christian and our faith dictates us that an IVF procedure is obviously something that we cannot do. A Long story short, God in you know, the infinite God of mercy blessed us with our daughter, Faith McKenzie Joaquin on November twenty the year two and two. And you know, God had given me a wife. Now God had given me a daughter. But for me, Jacob, at that point in time, I was still mad at God. Quite frankly, i was pissed at him because I treated him like a vending machine. You know, I put in my quarter and I wanted my first child and my beautiful daughter faith came out, the greatest gift outside of my wife that God has given me. But when I put the second quarter in the vending machine and I wanted my son and he wouldn’t give it to me, that’s when I got pissed at him. So instead of he was putting the pieces of the puzzle back together, but he wasn’t putting them back fast enough for me. So then I turned away from him again and dawned the new addiction and that was the addiction of workaholism, which took me into my mid to late thirties. So that’s kind of the first couple steps of turning back to God on my prodigal son journey. What was the?
Jacob Barr :
So after, you know, after the abortion experience, who was the first person you know in later years that you shared this with and in order to try and find healing from this experience like who was who was that person and how did that go?
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah. So that there’s a little bit of a back story to that, Jacob, on the in my late thirties, I started getting involved heavily with a program called that Man As You. It’s a program that’s in 800 parishes around the world, actually. So that was my the beginning of my steps really to developing my relationship with God and in that process i took on a spiritual director. Spiritual director is Father Ed Sylvia. And basically in my first few meetings with him, he suggested to me, Jacob, that I do a general confession. Again, being Catholic Christian, I know all your listeners aren’t Catholic Christian, but for us with that, man is it’s a it’s a deep dive into your past. You have to peel back all the spirits, the spiritual onion from years of sinful nature. And then I brought it into confession in about an hour, and that confession was about an hour and 20 minutes long general confession in an hour and 10 minutes into it jacob is when for the first time in my life, I had to confess the sin of taking my son at the age of 17. And in an instant the God of mercy, the God of infinite mercy, forgave me for that sin. The priest walked out of the confessional, wrapped his arms around me, and he said welcome home, son. So really the first person, Jacob, that I told my grave mortal sin to was a Catholic priest who then gave me absolution. But more than anything, after that absolution, after I reconciled myself with God, the first human being outside of a priest that I told the story to was my beloved wife. And in a lot of the, you know, men listening and women listening, certainly the woman understand we can grief share as couples. You know, the husband can carry the burdens of the wife and the wife can carry the burdens of the husband. And that’s part of what marriage is we share the burden. And I hope and pray one day to be a good enough man to be able to share half of the burden that my poor wife has shared with me. So first it was God, then it was my wife. You know, those were the first two people that I really, and this Jacob didn’t happen until the age of 40. So for 23 years I carried that burden and it was a cancer inside of me that was really just eating me from the inside, is what it’s doing.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, well one of the verses that has, well that I really like it was my favorite verse last year is James five sixteen, which reads therefore confess your sins one to another, I’m sorry, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. And so that verse is saying confessing to another person and in order to find healing and then it goes on to say the prayers. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. And so obviously with the priest and I I’m not Catholic and I don’t know how confession works, but I’m pretty I’m pretty confident that the priest is praying while listening to the confession i can’t imagine it being any other way. And so I feel like James five sixteen is taking place within that confessional experience because you’re confessing your sins to another person and that person is a righteous person who is praying and that and those prayers, or those prayers are considered powerful and effective. And so yeah.
Jeff Joaquin :
That’s a that’s a very good point and what as Catholics, without getting into a theological argument, because I can assure you I’m no theologian, you know what Catholics believe is, you know, from the Gospel of John chapter 20, verse 21 it’s Jesus speaking to his apostles and he breathes the Holy Spirit into them. And he says to those apostles who sends you forgive a forgiven them and whose sins you retain or retain so it it’s kind of a compilation if you will, of the words of John and the gospel, the words of James. And again it the unique part about it Jacob, is being that I’m Catholic, Christian, that’s what our church teaches us we have to do. But just like you pointed out, the priest acting as another human being, he’s acting as in persona Christie now he’s in the person of Christ. But i’m telling my sins to him no different than I did a week later with my wife. And because really, Jacob, I’ll be honest with you, the most important part of my recovery process has been, is been getting reconciliation with the God of the universe for the sin I had taken. I am a creature, and I had killed another one of his creatures in my girlfriend’s womb. That’s the part that a lot of people don’t understand we are creatures. It’s not our right and it’s and we certainly don’t have an obligation to determine whether or not something that the creator initiated. The creatures don’t get to decide whether or not it lives but I get off on a tangent. But for me the second and third steps of the procedure from my healing has been me sharing it with people. Just like just like James says, Just like the Apostle James says. I shared it with my wife. Ok, then I had to, if you will. I had to recognize that I had a son in heaven, Jacob right? So i confess my sins to the priest. Then I share my sin and my past with my wife. And now I want to develop a relationship with my with my son, right? So you know I pray to him there hasn’t been a day in the last 10 years that I don’t pray for my son. And then I don’t ask for him to pray for me. Because now I have a surrogate in heaven jacob, right? And he can intercede for me and he and I can pray to him and ask him, ask him to be with me during difficult times ask me to give the courage to stand in front of cameras and speak about him and me. So that process of sharing that burden with my wife and now with my son in heaven, these have been great uplifting experiences for me in healing in the way that James speaks about that you mention.
Jacob Barr :
What was it like to go from having that burden to voicing it to the priest and then to your wife? Well, how would you contrast those two places to be at like when it comes to the noise or the ability to think about good things or think about something, You know, that burden is not just heavy i think it’s also noisy. And, you know, it takes a lot of attention and it probably zaps your ability to, you know, to think clearly perhaps but how would you describe the difference between, yeah, before and after? You know, confessing and sharing and praying?
Jeff Joaquin :
You know, Jacob Hitt, I’ve always, as I’ve grown now in the last 12 or 13 years on in my spiritual journey, the continual and conversion process, I’ve learned one simple thing. When I know that there’s Peace of Mind and calm associated with the situation, that the Lord is there with me. When there’s anxiety and fear and nervousness, I know that it’s the enemy. And that’s why I knew when I walked into that confessional don’t get me wrong, I approached the Lord with fear and trembling as Scripture says I was nervous. Pardon my French as a whore in church. Ok, pardon my French because I had to take 25 years of pain and guilt and sorrow and I had to bring that to God. But if there’s any message and I’m so blessed, I get to tell this story in countless arenas across the country. What I try to tell people is God’s mercy is not it’s infinite and in the norms of his just it the his mercy, the limits of his mercy, far exceeds the norms of his justice. So God wants you to run in there and get his mercy he, he’s in fact, he’s already died to give you that mercy so you know, it’s as I walked out of that confessional, I was set free. When I, when I had my wife share the burden with me jacob another big weight lifted off when I when I named my son and gave him an identity. That was another liftoff. But I’ll be honest with you, nothing could compare to the next step in the journey for me. And that was to call my former girlfriend. See, I had reconciled with God. I had shared the burden with my wife. I had developed a relationship with my son in heaven. But now it was time for me to make right that which I had done so wrong. And you know, keep in mind, I was 42 now at the time, Jacob, So the abortion had taken place 25 years before. And my girlfriend, I didn’t know where she was living i didn’t know what she was doing. So I prayed to God kneeling down in the Chapel one day I said, God, if this is something that you want me to do and open up the doors and let it happen. And Jacob, I made a couple phone calls to friends that I still had back in Massachusetts. Two days later, the gentleman what My good friend called me back and gave me the number of my former girlfriend. And I’ll be honest with you, Jacob and this kind of goes to the question that you’re asking. You talk about the fear and trembling that I went into the confessional with. Well, the fear and trembling that I went into this phone call with, it’s probably five times as much wow Because the devil was telling me the whole time, he said, Jeff, it wasn’t your fault it was her fault. She should have been using, you know, the pill. It wasn’t your fault. He all he, you know, he’s the encourager. When I was 16 years old, he was encouraging me into fornication. And then after I had the conceived the child in the womb then he was the accuser, and he had been accusing me for decades. But at the end of the day, by God’s graces, I got on the phone with my former girlfriend in trembling i can remember the desk that I was sitting at in front of the speakerphone i was trembling, shaking like I had never shaken before, sweat pouring down my face. And I called her up and I and I got down on my spiritual knees and I begged her to forgive me. I begged her for me pudding her a see man, it’s easy for us, right all we have to do is be a spineless jellyfish and borrow money and pay somebody to kill our unborn child, right? But the woman has to go into the clinic, She has to go into the exam room, she has to put her feet up in stirrups, and she has to let the unthinkable happen to her as some doctor takes a baby from her womb. And I had never come to grips with that. I had never god’s graces really poured out on me to understand what I had done to this poor girl. And you know, when an instant Jacob she said to me you know Jeff, we were young. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. And I forgive you. And I will tell you I melted when I hung up that phone i melted. I melted i went to the Chapel the next day and prayed for two hours crying, thanking God for giving me the humility necessary. You know, I know, I know everyone on the phones of a pregnancy clinic director and most are probably female but for those that are men, you know when you’re speaking to men, speaking to them mercy. Speaking to them mercy. But we have to understand as men the gravity of the decision that we make when we don’t stand up for our unborn children in the womb. Yeah, we don’t stand up for our girlfriend or our wife. They’re looking for us to be men of courage, to be men of faith, to be men of honor. And we don’t, when we don’t live up to that honor it breaks down the entire nuclear family when we don’t do that.
Jacob Barr :
So going back to that day when you were in that, well, hot, hot car in the parking lot, was there anyone on the sidewalk trying to offer hope that day?
Jeff Joaquin :
And that’s just a tremendous question, Jacob, you know, because I’ll answer that question this way. In my early forties, when I finally had that convert that, you know, I was turning my life over to God, OK. One of the first things that I did was go out to an abortion clinic and sit there and pray with those that were who were coming into the clinics. And i jacob, the very first thing that ran through my weak and vulnerable mind was exactly what you just asked me. How come there couldn’t have been somebody outside of that abortion clinic in Providence, rhode island in july of nineteen eighty seven? And now. That person may not have been effective for me at that point in time, Jacob, because all I could think about was NFL career, college career, NFL career. But if they were there, and they could have spoke of word of hope and a word of encouragement to me, i may have foregone 25 years of pain and suffering. So no, there was not anyone there that day. It wasn’t even anyone outside at the door of the porticochet. So thanks be to God, the pro-life Movement has graduated from 1987 to 2023.
Jacob Barr :
Did the abortion clinic say anything to you As the other person in the in you know they that they gave your previous girlfriend any materials that were meant to help you cope or recover from this experience?
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah, What they gave me was a little bag, Jacob with pain pills to give my wife.
Jacob Barr :
Oh, OK.
Jeff Joaquin :
There was there was no offer of ultrasound before. There was no offer of adoption before. The only option for us was to take the life of the unborn child in the womb and then even post abortion there was nothing. It was it was a factory is really what it was, Jacob. And again 1987 that’s 35 years ago. Thanks be to God and we’re in a different place now with what all of your pregnancy directors who are on the call are doing now and again, you love scripture, Jacob i love scripture, OK? The prophet Isaiah says in chapter 43 verse 4, the divinely words of the prophet Isaiah it says you are precious in my eyes and honored. And I love you. That’s God speaking to those men and women that are walking into that, you know, pregnancy clinic or we’re walking into, you know, a Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood facility excuse me? All they want is hope. They want somebody to give them hope, to take away that fear. Give them, give them. Let them know that God is a God of mercy he’s not a God of judgment. They’re not bad people. We understand all the things that are going through their mind. We understand that they’re not ready to be parents yet. But it’s that mercy, Jacob. It it’s with God it’s always about mercy. It’s never about judgment. And that’s what your pregnancy directors I’m sure do on a daily basis. It’s to give hope because Jacob really, I have my wife and I have one daughter. At the age of 17 knew I was not ready to be a father. At the age of 33 when we had our daughter, I knew I wasn’t ready to be a father. It was my daughter that taught me how to be a father. That’s the great dichotomy of the whole pro-life pro-choice movement is as parents whether you’re 17 or 33 you’re never ready to be a parent. It’s that child that you give birth to that teaches you how to be a parent. Does that make sense?
Jacob Barr :
Perfect sense yeah, i agree completely yeah so going back to when you were in that vehicle and it was hot in that car, what could have been said to A, motivate you to go in and rescue your, you know, your girlfriend and child? Or B, what could have been said maybe to fast track your healing and recovery to help you know, look at look into that down the road? Or maybe there’s something else that could have been said that would have been really helpful at that time what are your thoughts on what could have been said if there was someone there and when there are people on the sidewalk looking for like, what should I say? You know, what would be a good encouragement for what they could say?
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah, Jacob, that’s just a tremendous question. I’ll tell you what I said in my early forties and I give God all this credit, OK, What I would say I was the IT was me and another one I my, you know, Chris, glad you, I’ll mention him he’s a pro-life warrior out of Texas. Ok. And he really helped me integrate myself into praying out in front of the abortion clinic. Ok. And I was the designated guy that talked to the men, right. The woman would come in and there was a whole army of beautiful women that were, you know, loving and caring and could reach out to these women. But anytime a man came over to the fence, that was, that was my time, if you will, to act. Ok And you know what i would say Jacob and I prayed a lot about this, OK? I would go up to the man and I would say, hey, listen, I’ve got a football in my truck. Would you mind playing catch with me over in the parking lot there? And Jacob, keep in mind, this is a young man or in his twenties or thirties, he’s getting ready to go into an abortion clinic and here’s this moron out in front of the clinic asking to play catch with a football. But it got him to change his mind, Jacob, on what he was doing into a 30.000 thousand foot level. And then depending on how he would respond what I would say is listen, I wish today that I had not made a decision that I had made when I was 17 years old that son that I aborted then And subsequent to that the son that I was never able to have. I can’t play catch with him but I can play catch with you so what ‘d you do me that honor and you know sometimes Jacob what that would do for that man and I would follow it up with you know you’re making a decision today that you think you’re going to get to undo five years from now. You know oK. I’m not ready for a child now but five years from now I will be. You think you’re going to be able to just, you know, flick that switch on, But if you may be like me is what I would say to the men. I’ve never been able to have the sun that I so long to have and it breaks my heart to say that in the men you know by God’s graces and only by God’s graces, Jacob, I can’t tell you how many times that man would have a chance to reflect and he would have a conversation with his wife and then by God’s graces they’d get in their vehicle and they ‘d drive off. So it it’s an honor and a privilege for me to be able to try to do something for someone else that was quite frankly not done for me. And I don’t say that out of out of you know, retribution or i you know, I wish somebody was there. But you know that that’s kind of how the mindset and the thought process that I tried to bring to the front lines of the sidewalk counseling is get him to think not about today, but about eternity you know, you think you’re going to be able to have one or two or three children. And that might not be God’s plan if you make this decision today and again, not coming from judgement, It was always coming from my pain. If I could take my pain and through vulnerability show that gentleman my pain. Decades of pain. It was it was kind of like watching. He could watch a movie of what could be in store for him if he continued on with this decision he was about to make.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah that’s really good. And that’s and it’s sort of an open door for people to look at how they can sort of express that vision into the future. And A and a future child is not the same or doesn’t replace the current child. I would, you know, a future child would be an addition an additional child, not a not the same child, but that current child is here yeah wow. So is there anything else you’d like to say that’s part of your story that you that you would really like executive directors or people who are listening to hear?
Jeff Joaquin :
Yeah, you know, Jacob, I’ve been, I’ve been blessed over the last three years. When I first gave this talk in at a pro-life gala in the Diocese of Saint Petersburg and the Bishop came up, the Bishop, current Bishop Gregory Parks was he had tears rolling down his eyes during the talk that I gave. And he asked me and he came up to my wife and I after and he said I’m going to pray for you because i want you to be able to share this story with as many people in this world as you can. And you know, Jacob, over the last few years i’ve had so many opportunities and you know, EWTN form.org in front of the White House see, I mean it it’s countless opportunities. But the gift for me, Jacob Saint Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians. The Corinthians the second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 9 through 10. This is where he’s Speaking of Jesus about that thorn in his flesh, right? And he’s asking Jesus three times he asked them to remove that phone from his flesh. Now what does Jesus say he says my grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect through weakness. Jacob Me being able to tell my story at men’s conferences and retreats and documentaries is a way to set myself free. But the real gift for me, Jacob, has been to see how it sets other people free. I’ll give you a couple examples, one for the woman that are listening and one for the men. A year ago I gave my abortion talk at a local high school here in saint petersburg florida. And after the talk was over, the principal asked me to go over on the side of the auditorium so that people could confront me in a confidential way. And I had a number of people come up and thank me and whatnot and but it was, it was this group of four, what I believe was sophomores and the four of them walked close enough to be able to get my attention but not close enough to be able to have a conversation. And one of those girls looked at me right in the eyes jacob and she was looking straight through my soul. And she looked at me with a tear rolling down her cheek as she rubbed her stomach and she mouthed the words thank you see she didn’t want her three friends to know that God that day had entered into her womb, into her mind and convinced her to save that child that was in her womb. And Jacob, I can’t even really explain to you in words how humbling it is to see that type of have that type of experience. But it’s just that’s the way that God gives back to me for the little bit that I’ve been able to give to him. I’ll give you one other example. I did a conference here in Tampa, a retreat in Tampa. And anytime I give the talk, Jacob, what i’m looking, I ask the Lord to do is bless me with the wisdom to focus in on that one, the one lost sheep that is so lost that you want to find and may Lord you work through my vulnerability to reach him. Well, Jacob, that talk got done in 45 minutes. And afterwards I went out into the hallway and there was about 10 or 11 men there that share their abortion experience and how they were going to reconcile themselves with God. And that’s just such a gift to me, OK. But the one person that I had focused in on for that entire talk was not one of those 12 people. So I went to the back of the auditorium and I just sat there to decompress for a little bit. And I remember saying to the Lord, I said, Lord, I failed you today because I did not reach that one sheep that you needed me to reach. And I failed you today, Lord and I and I’m humbled because of that. And the second I said the word humbled Jacob, A man sat down on my right hand side and he put his hand on my shoulder and he looked at me in the eyes and he said, can I tell you my story? This man has four children. He had two children and he named the age and the name of those two children and he gave the year that they were born. And then he said after the second child was born, my I lost my job and then my wife lost her job and we were in financial ruin and we had two abortions, both of us. We had two abortions before we had our third child. And he said, I have never, ever talked about this my wife and I have never talked about this since the day that those two, the period of time when those abortions happen. But because you’ve shared your testimony today, I’m going to, I’m not even going to stay for the rest of the retreat. I’m going to go home. I’m going to get on my knees and I’m going to beg my wife to forgive me for putting her through that. And Jacob, i could go on for hours and hours and hours and hours on different stories with men, different stories with women. All I would say to the people, the pregnancy center directives, all I would say to you is this, Show the people that come into your clinic who Jesus Christ is. Show them love. Show them understanding. Show them mercy. Show them compact show them empathy. Be Jesus for them. They need you to be the best version of Jesus that you can be For them. They are in, as you know, fear, anxiety this world is telling them that the especially the young ladies, it’s your body. You get to do it at what you want. Well, it is her body, but there’s another body that’s inside of her body. So show them compassion. Show them empathy and show them the mercy of god is not a God of justice he is a God of. He eventually will be a God of justice, but he is a God of mercy. There’s a reason why Jesus is depicted in Scripture as a lamb and the Holy Spirit is depicted in Scripture as a dove. It’s because that humility and that compassion that they want to show, they’re creatures. That’s what you as pregnancy center directors need to do. And I know that you’re doing it now. But the more effectively, the more that you conform yourself to the light to being Jesus, like, the more you will be Jesus to them. And if and when they see Jesus, when they come in and get that sonogram, they are not going to take that baby. They’re not going to do it because you’ve showed them hope over fear. So bring the God of mercy to them. Shower them with empathy and if you have a story to tell them that can give them encouragement and can give them hope, share listen. I will say this Jacob. Before I started sharing my story all over this country, I was in the Chapel one day praying. And I said, Lord, how in the world am I going to get ultimate healing from this pain even after you’ve forgiven me, I still have the pain inside of me and I’ll never forget this it was like a slap in the face jacob, he said, will you look up please at this cross? And I looked up at the cross and he said, what do you think these scars are for? Who do you think these scars are for? These scars are for you and your healing, Jeff. Now it’s time for you to take your scars and show them to others for their healing. And Jacob, it it’s been an honor in the last two years. But for the pregnancy center directors, show them your pain. It’s OK to be vulnerable people. It’s OK to be vulnerable because when you’re vulnerable, you give hope to someone else. You give them the capacity to forgive. You give them to the capacity to do that which is beyond them. Philippians four thirteen i can do all things through him who gives me strength. Yes, you can carry that baby because God’s going to carry it with you amen.
Jacob Barr :
Amen wow. I love how you just bring it all together and just provide such encouragement and hope and just such a positive outlook on this. Just the, yeah, the world, the world that we’re trying to work in this in this pro-life world and we’re trying to rescue people from abortion and you’re. Yeah, I think you’ve got a message of hope and encouragement that is providing people in good direction, essentially, to follow in Jesus’s footsteps as being people who can offer healing as well as people who can then look at looking at the scars to find, yeah, to find the source of life enough healing.
Jeff Joaquin :
Jacob, you can. Yeah, you can and forgive me for interrupting you, you can give them whatever pamphlet you want to give them. You can send them to whatever program you want to send them to. You can send them to whatever retreat you want to send them to. All of that is good in the short term. If you introduce them to Jesus through your scars, in your woundedness, in your healing, you will get that young lady or that young man to get inside that gravitational pull of Jesus Christ. And when you introduce them to Jesus Christ, he who is the way, the truth, and the life john 14 Seven Not the way, the truth and the Choice or the in case of rape and incest and you know he is the life and when you introduce that poor young lady and that poor young man to Jesus Christ, it’ll be a baby that gets delivered because you’ve introduced them to he who is the creator of that baby.
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