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By David Maccabee
Hello. My name is Henry E. Lee. This is the story of my conversion to the Christian faith, and of my induction into and adventures in the Army of God.
I was named for two of my ancestors. My great great great grandfather was Robert E. Lee, and his father's name was Henry Lee. Henry Lee was known as Light Horse Lee in the first Revolutionary War. He was a superb calvaryman who in great part helped keep supplies coming to the starving army at Valley Forge.
Robert E. Lee fought in the second Revolutionary War, also known as the Civil War. Little need be said about how his abilities kept southern dreams alive for a long time.
Giants like that going on before you leave giant footsteps to fill. I joined the Marines when I turned 18, and served for 10 years, mostly in Recon. I learned to work with explosives, which came in real handy when I left the service and started working, "starting at the ground floor" of a construction company called Enterprise Construction. With almost all the money I had saved, I entered as a 25% partner and worked as an on-site supervisor.
Soon I had bought, and moved into, a colonial-style five bedroom house with a large attached garage. I turned one of the bedrooms into a large library, study and office, and began stocking the library with classics. I bought a Suburban, and a fully restored Pontiac GTO Judge -- I actually found a convertible!
I met Tracy Johnson at a memorial day picnic and soon I was seeing her every day. We soon became romantically involved, and about two months later she dropped a bomb on me. She had noticed that her period was late, so she went down to the corner drugstore and bought a pregnancy test and it had come back positive!
I just stood and stared, and my chin was probably down about my ankles, eyes bulging out of my head like in the cartoons. I stood there with babies wrapped in pink and blue dancing around in my head as I tried to picture myself as a daddy. I must have proved to be a most comical sight, sputtering and stammering away, and she started to laugh.
It started out a happy laugh, but soon took on a hysterical note. I grabbed her in a hug, and she burst into tears with great heaving sobs. I told her "This won't affect our wedding plans at all! We are more than able to take care of a baby!"
Her face fell even further. "I can't go through with it! I'm going to have an abortion!"
I had not been prolife, and had thought abortion was an easy way to solve a problem. But now it was up close and personal, and instead of a blob of tissue it was a baby, in my mind.
I told her, "You can't do that! This baby is our child!"
"I'm not ready yet", she shot back. I want to stay in college. I started college at the age of 25, and here I am, 4 years later, close to a bachelor's degree."
"There is no way in hell", I ordered, "that you are going to kill our baby! Please, honey, just think about it. Because you can't take back a mistake like this. Dead is dead, after all! You can't just kill a child to make your life easier. What kind of person would that make you?"
She tore herself from me and ran out the door crying. As I stood still, in shock, I heard her shoot out the driveway in her 1969 Mach 1 mustang, spraying gravel as she left. I ran out, but she was already out of sight.
I grabbed shoes, shirt and keys and within minutes was on my way to her apartment complex about 10 minutes away. When I pulled in, her car was nowhere in sight.
I drove to her mother's house. Her car was not there either. I drove by a few of her friends' houses before I returned home.
I turned in late that night after lots of phone calls trying to find Tracy, with no success. Then two names came to mind: Michael and Bernadette Henry, a Christian couple involved in the Pro-life cause who I ran into, once in awhile, through one of Tracy's friends. I got back up and called them, and gave a few details. I asked if I could stop by. Henry accepted, and told me how to get there in the shortest time.
I arrived about midnight. They both met me at the door as I walked up.
My first question was "Do I have any legal right to stop her from having an abortion?"
Michael shook his head slowly and sadly.
I asked, "How many clinics are in town, and what are their addresses? I will drive by Monday to see if I can find her car. Hopefully I can talk to her and get her to change her mind."
After he gave me the information he asked, "May I pray with you about it? Prayer really changes things."
I asked, "What denomination do you belong to, and how long have you been a religious person?"
He told how he had been a drug using, booze drinking, woman chasing hippie until he met the Lord at a Billy Graham crusade. He asked me if I had a relationship with Jesus and if I had been "born again" and "saved".
"Why do I need to be saved, and what do I need to be saved from? I'm a better than average person, I've led a pretty clean life, better by far than some people I knew!"
He said that since God first created everything, people on earth, beginning with the first people, Adam and Eve, have really blown it. They disobeyed God, and brought a curse upon every one of their descendants: all the way down to us!
He took me to Romans in the Bible and showed me how God looks at us without Jesus. In the 3rd chapter, verse 10, it said "As it is written there is none righteous, no, not one." He showed me in verse 23 that "everybody has sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God". Then he told me something terrible: the result of sin, in chapter 6, verse 23. It reads "for the payment for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
I asked Mike, "since I don't have Jesus, and I am still alive, when did this 'death' kick in?"
He said "After you die you will stand before God. If your sins are still with you, you will be thrown into hell, forever to suffer."
Frightened, both by the sense of glimpsing the magnitude of my sins, and by the realization that there was no way I could be certain he was wrong, I asked, "Is there were any way out for me?! What is this 'gift of God' talked about in 6:23?"
He took me to Romans 5:6-8 and explained, "God loves us, even while we hate Him. He sent His son to take our punishment and make peace between God and man." He shared John 3:16, adding, "God loved the people of the world. He gave His son, not only to save us from hell but also to adopt us and give us eternal life!"
"I WANT this gift! I want to be born again like it says in John 3:3. I want to repent of my sins, which had caused Jesus to be put to death, and I want to ask for forgiveness, so that Jesus will come into my heart and be my Lord!"
I felt a heavy weight lifted off, and peace flowing over me like a wave of water.
We were all praying and reading the Bible, and Mike gave me one of his own study Bibles that he was not using. He said "Start at John, read through Jude, and then read through the whole New Testament. Psalms and Proverbs are something you can read every day as well."
We prayed for Tracy.
I left for home about 3. I prayed and went to sleep.
I spent the next day looking for her, calling lots of her friends and family. I called it off around 8 that evening and did some chores around the house.
As I was getting ready for bed I remembered to go into prayer, praying for my family to come to Jesus, and for God to touch Tracy's heart, and that I could grow as a Christian.
As I started to stand up I knocked my Bible down off the bed. It lay sprawling across the floor. As I reached down to pick it up, I saw that it had fallen open to Proverbs. There were some verses highlighted in pink and blue alternating lines, which immediately caught my eye. It was 24:10-12.
The main message was "Rescue those unjustly sentenced to death and save those staggering to the slaughter."
I thought God was trying to show me something, so I prayed that He would help me see what He wanted me to see.
The breeze from the blower caught and turned a couple of pages backwards to another highlighted spot in chapter 21:13, where it said that if I closed my ears to the cry of the helpless, one day I would cry out and not be heard.
I remembered a verse I had read in John 15:12-13, saying that we are commanded to love one another, and the greatest expression of love is to sacrifice oneself for another.
I sat and puzzled how I could save my child without kidnapping Tracy until she had the baby.
All of a sudden I had an idea that would not only stop, possibly, Tracy from killing our child, but also save the lives of many other helpless children. I grabbed a coat and my truck keys, and drove to our construction headquarters. I opened the lock to our supply trailer where our explosives were held. Actually it was the body of an old Brinks Armored Car, a safe place for explosives.
I took the lock and broke it with a heavy duty lock cutter, dropped it on the ground, and went inside. I had a flashlight and gloves, and I tossed a lot of things around while I got 35 sticks of dynamite, as well as wiring, timers, and blasting caps. I finished messing things up to make it look like a burglary, and then took of for my first stop.
I arrived at Planned Parenthood and parked a block or so away. I grabbed my gear in a small backpack and walked to the building. I saw a tree growing up close to the building with low branches, and the roof covered in a canopy of leaves.
It was midnight, June 3, when I crossed the lines of the law and joined the war against abortion.
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