Blah.
Blah.
Blah.
I have dreaded adding more words to the air around us that is already saturated with words,
opinions, bad news, “influencers.” In our home, we watch TV at night with a 24-hour
news cycle, listen to the radio (or a podcast) as we drive. We read our phones while
we are walking from one place to another - I can’t tell you the number of people I
have seen nearly get hit by a car in NY because they walked into traffic while
reading their phones. We are saturated with opinions!
And what does that accomplish for us? Having walked into traffic in NY while
reading my phone more than once, I have to ask myself if all of this noise is
advancing a culture of life, and whether my partaking of it is helping me to advance
a culture of life.
A little over 2 years ago, on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs.
Wade. I thought that day would never come. We celebrated this – and celebrated
the countless lives that have been saved by state laws limiting abortion.
But in the 2+ years since that time, we have watched many states pass legislation
enshrining abortion. Polls indicate a shift in public opinion that favors abortion and
forgets the aborted. My own state of New York wants to enshrine it as a right
protected by our state constitution.
The problem is so big, it can feel overwhelming and I, like I suspect many of you,
find myself asking what can I possibly do in this historical moment. I don’t
have a 10 step plan for this post-Roe world. But I will offer a 1 step plan that was a
paradigm shift in my own life.
People who make a living speaking about how to be effective and accomplish things
talk about understanding the difference between our circle of concern and our circle
of influence. Steven Covey popularized the concept in his book The 7 Habits of
Highly Effective People. (https://learningloop.io/glossa 10/9/24)
Our circle of concern refers to all of those things that concern us, but over which we
may or may not have control:
- Global warming
- How badly other people drive
- The words that might come out of a particular presidential candidate’s
mouth during a pivotal presidential debate.
These are all things we legitimately worry about but ultimately that we cannot
control. They lie in our circle of concern.
Our circle of influence lies within our circle of concern but refers to those things that
we can do something about:
- The words that WE say
- How we behave in our relationships, our families, our communities, our
places of employment or worship
- What we do with our time
“Highly effective people” are those who focus on the things that lie within their
sphere of influence rather than wasting energy worrying about those things outside
of their control. I would say that the 3 couples who have been honored tonight are
“highly effective people.”
I would add to that list the unstoppable Barbara Rose.
My mini “claim to fame” is that I started the first Gianna medical practice in New
York City in 2009. It is a practice very similar to your wonderful Gianna Center here
in Philadelphia. It is NYC’s only pro-life women’s medical center offering positive
alternatives to birth control, IVF and abortion. But the reality is that our NY Gianna
Center – and your Philadelphia Gianna Center -- exist because of the way many of
the people in this room used their circle of influence.
I was a medical student at Jefferson in 2002. With another student, we had just
started a Medical Students for Life Group when Barbara Rose tracked me down and
introduced me to the Creighton Model and NaProTechnology. It was timely! I was
having conversations with pro-choice medical students, who always wanted to
debate me, asking what I could possibly offer to women if I did not believe in birth
control, abortion or IVF. I knew what I wouldn’t do…but had no idea what I could
offer. Barbara introduced me to Tom and Sue Hilgers, two of our exceptionally
deserving honorees and from them I learned about the CrMS and NaProTech, born
of their work, within their circles of influence in response to Humanae Vitae.
I learned an approach to women’s health that was just good medicine.
In every other field of medicine, our medical training focused on learning how the
organ works, what goes wrong, what tools we have to restore health and normal
function. Except in the field of women’s health – our reproductive health curriculum
was not that. - Shut down the normally functioning organ system using a drug or
device.
- Bypass it using IVF without regard for the incredible number of embryos
destroyed, the high rates of prematurity, the increased risk of birth defects, or babies
conceived through IVF having an increased risk of childhood cancer.
It is like women have been tricked into demanding substandard care as a personal
right.
The research done by Dr. Hilgers and his colleagues has given us a real alternative,
one that gets to the underlying cause of a woman’s reproductive health problems
and corrects them – and women want this care. The same women who will not eat
a hamburger if the cow it came from was treated with hormones are not dumb –
they don’t want to put unnecessary hormonal substances into their bodies that are
not necessary.
As a student, I was hooked. What this small group of doctors offered was
compelling. And as I was finishing my medical training, I felt the Lord calling me to
do what to me was unthinkable – move to NYC to start a medical practice making
this exceptional care available to women. I traveled around the country studying
medical practice models, wrote a business plan, started fundraising, started
planning, and implementing and being passably effective.
When I moved to NYC in the summer of 2009 to start the Gianna Center there, it
had become overwhelming. It is overwhelming to start a business – and it was
overwhelming to live in NYC, having come from Lancaster! I had also just finished
my medical training and had no business experience!
One day I was feeling particularly overwhelmed – and not very effective. I decided
to go for a run to try to clear my head and find some peace. I ended up running
right into Times Square which is possibly the single least peaceful place in the
world! It stopped me in my tracks, because I
was like, “Lord, where are you in all of this?”
And at that moment, I saw in the dead center of Times Square a giant stone cross.
It wasn’t a vision or a hallucination. It is actually there. It
stands behind the statue of Fr. Francis Duffy, a famous NY chaplain from WWI. But
it is there.
I was stunned, and it stopped me in my tracks a second time. It was like the Lord
was reminding me that in the midst of all of the chaos, the noise, the distractions,
the stress, the anxiety, He is there. In the center. I realized that no matter how
much “being effective” demanded of me, God alone is in the center and my
effectiveness depended on finding him there and keeping my eyes fixed on him.
In the year that followed, we lost all of our funding 3 times. But the Lord Himself
sustained our mission when all of our brilliant planning and hard work led to nothing
at all. And NY’s Gianna Center is still there today, about 6 blocks from the Empire
State Building.
This is what makes the difference for us.
Our circle of influence is where we are most effective, but the most important thing
within our circle of influence is what influences us. And if that center is the Lord -
His voice leading us as we seek first and foremost His will – then without being trite,
all the noise in the world does not matter because the Kingdom of God is at here.
Our circles of influence becomes the gateway through which God Himself influences
the world.
He opens doors we could never figure out a way to open – we respond by walking
through them.
It is frankly the only pathway that will lead to a culture of life. We let Him build it, by
letting Him first build us.
If building a culture of life is our actual work, our actual job, we need to examine our
consciences and make sure that we are not allowing the urgency of our “important
work” – or the many loud voices around us - to steal the silence in which we hear
and respond to Him.
Most of the time, His will is simply that we remain faithful to our daily duties, doing
the next “right thing” with love, as the Saints teach us. And we need to be ready, if
in the silence, the Lord asks something bigger of us than He asked on any prior day.
But ultimately God is the conductor of this symphony – and each of us the members
of the orchestra. God is the commander of this little army – and we are the foot
soldiers waiting for our marching orders. The music He makes when we are in sync
with Him drowns out the noise and the battle for life will only be won to the degree
that each one of us hears and responds to His voice.