Matisse* is a mother of 10 who has been a pro-life advocate for more than a decade and learned recently that her birth mother had intended to abort her. Matisse says she has been shown by God that He protected her and chose her to create what she calls the “tapestry” of her life.
Her focus is to “speak for those who can’t,” a phrase she bore on a t-shirt the day she shared her story with Pregnancy Help News.
Matisse always knew her biological mother’s identity and that she was raised by her grandparents. Given that her mother was in high school when she got pregnant, Matisse’s grandmother did not want her daughter to miss out on her young life.
So, alongside her uncles Matisse was brought up in a home where she was cared for, but deep inside her heart she felt, “unwanted, unloved, and undesired.”
“My poor little heart still has no idea what it is like to be held by a mother or father who deeply loves me,” Matisse said.
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Today she praises God for the sidewalk counselors who pray outside abortion centers like the Planned Parenthood where her mother was dropped to abort her. Matisse believes she was spared because “somebody was praying.”
“I wish I knew who they were,” she said. “But alas, I have no doubt I can give them a great big hug when I go home (to heaven) someday.”
Matisse was in her early thirties before she was informed of her mother’s trip to Planned Parenthood.
“I had just returned from my very first time out ministering on the sidewalks in front of the busiest abortion center in the Southeast,” she told a group of women at a local church event. “Earlier that week, the Spirit had nudged me to go out and serve.”
That day Matisse brought along her four-month-old child, then the youngest of six, to pray outside an abortion facility. That day a mom visiting the facility chose life for her child and Matisse was delighted to pray over her while she wore her own child in a baby wrap.
“After our time there, we all gathered together and prayed, parted ways, and returned to our lives,” she recalled.
Matisse felt overwhelmed with gratitude and wanted to share what happened with others.
“I got on my computer and wrote all about it online,” she said. “I was so on fire for the Lord and wanted to tell everyone!”
Her posting on social media prompted a phone call from her biological mother, and the disclosure of how Matisse might have been aborted.
“I remember walking my backyard listening to everything she had to say,” she said. “Absorbing all of my history that I had never, ever, heard.”
That history would include her grandparents driving her mom to Planned Parenthood to resolve a situation they had just learned about, and her mom had hidden for months.
They were stunned to learn that Matisse’s mother was seven months along, and as she returned to the car, she informed them that she was too far in her pregnancy for an abortion. Matisse was born six weeks later.
This filled in some blanks for Matisse as she listened because she had often heard her mother say that she didn’t have to have her. Now she understood what that meant.
Matisse said her birth mother is avidly pro-abortion and was outraged at her daughter’s posting about a “save” outside an abortion center.
Matisse said her mother is now angered when she credits God for saving her that day her mother went to Planned Parenthood. She recognized how her post had stirred up a spiritual battle that had long affected her mother’s heart.
Matisse has served outside abortion facilities now for roughly a decade, ministering to women, proclaiming the gospel, and praying for abortion to end. She trusts that her interactions with her family earlier and since are all part of God’s plan.
“And here’s a lesson I learned; sometimes you will labor, toil, plant seeds, and yet not experience the fruit,” Matisse explained.
Tweet This: Sometimes you will labor, toil, plant seeds, and yet not experience the fruit.
One of the abortion centers was shut down and Matisse shares that victory when giving her testimony.
Matisse’s grandmother, like her mother, is also a defender of abortion to this day. She is highly resistant to answering Matisse’s questions about how her life was spared and the early years of her childhood.
“I didn’t and still do not see why any of this should be important for you to know,” her grandmother wrote to her. “It happened a long time ago and can’t be a ‘do over’ . . . it’s done.”
“What you say is ‘unimportant history’ has always been written on my heart,” Matisse responded.
As the mother of now 10 children on Earth and one in heaven following a miscarriage, Matisse is grateful for her life. She homeschools her children and is focused on their knowing the value of life, and most of all that the source of salvation is Jesus.
Matisse shared the message from two Scripture passages when corresponding with her grandmother (Genesis 50:20 and Romans 8:28) stating, “What man intends for evil God uses for good,” and “God works all things together for His good.”
Matisse longs for the day when her grandparents, her mother, and her father, whom she has not seen since she was five, will surrender their lives to the Lord. She also longs to know more about her first five years of life. But she trusts that God will continue to complete her “tapestry” in His own time.
*A pseudonym
