Healing begins
That came in 2005, when a friend urged her to go to a Rachel's Vineyard retreat. More than three decades of regret and agony roared to the surface of her soul like the snowstorm that raged outside the building at St. Thomas Academy in Mendota where 20 post-abortive women stayed for the January retreat.
"We had a memorial service for our babies," said Meyer, a member of Mary, Mother of the Church in Burnsville. "You sign a certificate of life. They also give you little dolls about six or eight inches long - no faces, but they're wrapped in a blanket and they're very soft. I took them and I slept with them that night. It was like I was acknowledging that they were my children, Esther and Daniel, and I could hold them.
"There was a blizzard outside. Everyone talked about the windows shaking in the storm. I heard nothing. It was the best night's sleep I'd had, I'm sure, in over 30 years."
The tears of healing shed that weekend return when Meyer tells her story, which she eagerly does to any young, scared pregnant woman who asks. She never forces it on anyone, but weaves it into the loving conversations she has with women she sees at Pregnancy Choices in Apple Valley, Minn. where she has served as executive director since 2010.
It's all part of her mission to be what she calls a "person of mercy."
"When I come to work here and I know someone who has aborted (a child) . . . I feel pain and regret," she said. "And, it's not regret like shame. . . . It's deeper and it takes me closer to the cross. And, that's what I've come to see. I never knew that I'd be working in this abortion realm, trying to save the lives of the mothers as well as the babies. Coming in touch with the pain takes me closer to Him. It's only in that wound that I really know who he is.
"He gives me incredible graces. Sometimes, when I'm working in the kitchen, I hear him - in that inaudible voice - say, 'I love you. You're mine.' So, I'm OK now being with the pain. I tried to run from it most of my life, but now I'm OK being with it because if I just allow it, it deepens my relationship with the Lord."
Offering a listening ear
Yet, as much as the Holy Spirit compels her to work in this intense ministry where the success stories are often never known, she has to, at all times, restrain her desire to pull women away from the deeply hurtful choice of abortion. She knows the pain it can cause, but must never, ever give even the slightest hint of trying to control the pregnant woman's behavior - like her boyfriend in 1972 tried to control hers.
"When people come in here, I'd like to just give them a hug and say, 'Honey, don't do that (have an abortion). But, I can't," she said. "The most important gift God gave us is free will. And, if you don't honor that, if you don't talk about it, then somebody with a bigger voice over here is going to say, 'Oh no, you've got to do this.' I want them to have a voice. I want them to know about options."
(Story continues below)
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As riveting as her story is, perhaps the most important thing she does is listen. The message she wants to send to the women is that they are not alone, and she and the staff at her clinic believe the best way to do that is with their ears and not their tongues.
Another effective tool is simply time. Though staffers and volunteers can have as few as five minutes with a pregnant woman, their goal is to slow down her thought and decision-making process. They want her to take the time to think through her decision and her options.
In other words, they want her to have a real choice, something Meyer never had in 1972.
Fortunately, she did have enough of a conscience left after the two abortions to consult a priest she had met while living in Nebraska, Father Thomas Halley. She went to him for confession within a year, and that began a chain of events that brought her back to Iowa in 1974 and her mother, Maurine Pickerill, now 84.
It was a bittersweet reunion. On the one hand, her mother welcomed her and took her back under her roof. On the other hand, it rekindled the emptiness of being abandoned by her father when she was five.
The poor way he treated his wife and four children (Jeanette was the oldest) was bad, but the emptiness of his abandoning them may have been worse. Added to that was the instability, with the family moving nine times during Jeanette's childhood.
But, Jeanette's sadness upon arriving back home was short-lived. After going to a charismatic prayer meeting in Omaha during her visit with Father Halley, she started going to meetings in Iowa and ended up back together with her high school sweetheart, Tim Meyer.