Perhaps you’re struggling with the concept of God’s forgiveness. You can understand it intellectually but have trouble believing it for yourself. Let’s return to Tracy’s story. She found an emphatic response to her doubts.

It happened as she was returning home with her three boys from a pro-life rally in Washington, D.C. Her sons, ages 11, 9, and 7, all knew about her abortion. But at the rally they learned about the reality of abortion in ways they hadn’t fully considered before. During the bus ride home, her youngest son asked, “Is that what you really did, Mom?” She answered quietly, “Yes, it was.”

Her second son said, “Wow, Mom, what if that had been one of us?”

It was then that her eldest son rocked her world. “But it was,” he said.

A conversation that could have destroyed Tracy suddenly overflowed with God’s powerful grace. “It was painful, yes,” she says. “But that moment became so precious to me. My innocent children made the full reality of abortion known to me. But it was okay. I knew it was completely covered with His grace.”

Not long after that bus ride, she made this entry in her journal:

The horrible revelation of the truth at that moment pierced straight through the mother’s heart within me. An arrow full of the poison of guilt and condemnation. The full force of the ramifications of the decision I had made years earlier hit me. My great shame and failure was laid bare before my innocent children. I saw the pain in their eyes and felt it in the weight of the silence between us. But grace. The awesome power of the gift of God’s grace. Out of my spirit came the reminder that I had been washed clean by the blood of Jesus. Not merely forgiven, but I had been made to be the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

That’s the scope of God’s love and grace. That’s the power of His forgiveness.