Debbie Yow
“How Can a Place So Safe, Be So Dangerous?”
I stood there and was overwhelmed by an unexplainable heaviness in my spirit. Something in me froze and tears just started rolling down my cheeks. Shocked by my own reaction and failing to comprehend why, I stayed upstairs while everyone else went down. It was the year 2017. I was in Israel and our guide had brought us to visit a Kibbutz, a nice residential neighbourhood. We were invited to visit a bomb shelter they had recently built. I was at the front gate of a house and our group had started going down a small stairwell to check out the bomb shelter. With that heavy heart, I wandered around the compound, found a chair and decided to peek through a small window at the side of the house. What I saw inside the house would change my life for eternity.
I saw many little children no older than three years. I realised I was looking at a house school. I started weeping again, and this time I could feel God speaking strongly into my heart, “How can a place so safe, be so dangerous?” Isn’t school supposed to be a safe place? Yet given that no one knows when a war will break out, a bomb shelter was built there. As I thought of how I send my own children to school daily, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the parents of these children living here. What fear for the safety of their children must have gripped them!
“How can a place so safe, be so dangerous?” God’s words lingered in my heart.
“What Is That Place?”
I left Israel with this encounter sealed in my memory. Convinced that God wanted me to leave the marketplace, I went on a career hunt over the next year, thinking that I could take a step of faith into the pre-school sector and be a kindergarten teacher!
But God. He showed up again on a quiet night in November 2018. I was putting our four-month old daughter to bed when God decided to reveal His heart to me. He gently asked, “Do you remember Israel?”
“Yes,” I replied, “You had said, ‘How can a place so safe be so dangerous?’”
“So what is that place?” He prompted.
I knew He was giving me time to think. And suddenly, like a lightning bolt, He shot it straight into my heart. That place is a mother’s womb. A mother’s womb is the place He had designed to be the safest for a child, for life to form and nurture from nothingness. Yet, this very same place has also become the most dangerous to life, where a baby could have his or her life snuffed out in the cruelest of ways.
The Heartbeat Project
I knew quickly God had asked me to respond to His call to pick up the mantle to join the forerunners to make abortion unthinkable in Singapore as well as to help those facing unsupported pregnancies realise that they are not alone, and that abortion is not the only solution. A few months later, I left my job and together with my husband and our church, we founded the Heartbeat Project. The platform provides real-life stories and resources for Christians to converse about life and abortion, and to be a portal of hope for those facing unsupported pregnancies.
Why am I on this kingdom assignment? He has called, and I have responded in obedience. And because every child, born and unborn, deserves a place in our Father’s house.
“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families…” Psalm 68:5-6
Since starting the Heartbeat Project in February, we have seen God’s heart in wanting us to expand beyond speaking for the unborn. We are to help set children in families through a movement of people, stories and actions like fostering and adoption. We are confident that we are going to save lives and change destinies.
Dear Archippus…
There are many pro-life champions out there and Debbie has pointed out the importance of journeying with like-minded, kingdom people to champion kingdom initiatives and spur one another on. Are you connected with these ones in your local community or outside? This will help you appreciate the larger Body of Christ and the greater picture of the kingdom of God. It will also encourage and edify you towards your own knowing and fulfilling of kingdom assignments. As Ps Henson writes in his book Alignment Check, “Hang out with the right crowd.”
Has Debbie’s story tugged at your heartstring in a special way? Are you seeing a potential kingdom connection or partnership? Find out more about the Heartbeat Project: heartbeatproject.sg
About Debbie
Debbie is the co-founder of the Heartbeat Project, a social movement that engages the church in conversations regarding life and abortion. She has two dreams; the first is for every child, born and unborn to experience the love of a family and the second is for the everyday person to realise we have the power to be that family.