During a time of separation from his first wife, Truett met and began seeing Lea, his wife, now of 46 years. After a season of being together, Lea discovered she was pregnant. In a moment of guilt and shame, they chose abortion. Soon after, they separated but came together after Truett and his first wife divorced. They rekindled their love and married, but neither addressed the abortion. The shame of this secret lived in darkness for many years before an encounter with God brought it to light. Here is Truett’s story of how a father can walk through healing and freedom from abortion. With the Lord, Truett was able to receive forgiveness and embrace the child that he had aborted.
Truett Roberts grew up in West Texas in a Christian home. When Truett was younger, he always believed he would be a minister. At eight years old, he gave his life to the Lord in a small Baptist church. Truett married his high school sweetheart when he was a sophomore in college. At the time, his life consisted of working as assistant manager at a local grocery store, attending a local university in preparation for ministry, pastoring a little rural church on Sundays, serving in the Naval Reserve, and spending time with his wife and new baby daughter. It was a sweet and simple time until the Vietnam War escalated. Truett was called out of the reserve status and into active duty. He gave up his role in the church, attended the university, and served full-time active duty for two and a half years.
A Father’s Abortion Story
When Truett completed his military service, he put the call of the Lord on hold and accepted a job position at a local insurance agency. He and his wife had another daughter, but their marriage was struggling. During their separation, someone introduced Truett to a woman named Lea. Lea had gone through a painful divorce herself when she met Truett. When they became intimate and conceived a child, the guilt and shame they felt from their circumstance led them to choose abortion.
“We were shocked by it, were consumed in shame and guilt, and feared the dishonor and embarrassment to us and our families,” says Truett of their decision to abort.
In 1973, Supreme Court judges ruled that restricting abortion was unconstitutional. With abortion being newly available, Truett and Lea decided quickly and painfully to abort their child. Truett took Lea to an abortion clinic in Fort Worth, then stayed with her for a few days to ensure she was okay. After this, his calls with Lea became less and less frequent. Eventually, the two lost contact with each other.
Healing After Abortion
In the following years, Truett and his first wife had a son, but their marriage struggled, eventually resulting in divorce. After the divorce, Truett found Lea again. They courted, married, and had a daughter together. Truett and Lea tried to find peace as their two families healed from divorce. Neither of them ever spoke of the abortion.
“I know what it’s like to be a broken man, trying to be a good husband and father and to bless my wife and children. But nothing in my life had prepared me to carry the wound of the abortion. I saw no answer but to carry it in secret for the rest of my life,” Truett said.
His scar from his abortion hadn’t healed, and the wound remained shameful until a friend of his and Lea’s invited them to a church. This church was a small, safe community. In this church, the Lord slowly opened their hearts, which had been hardened all those years from the pain of their abortion.
Healing After Abortion: Time to Speak
In 1985, Truett and Lea sat at their dinner table one night after their kids went to bed. With hearts newly softened by the grace of God and their church community, their conversation steered toward the unthinkable: the abortion they longed to forget.
At that moment, the air was still, and the presence of God filled the room. “We didn’t see Him physically, but we knew it was him, Jesus,” Truett recounts the powerful memory. In the silence, Truett and Lea felt God tell them, ‘It’s time. It’s time to speak to Me and to each other about the abortion.” As soon as He said this, they both began weeping deeply from all the shame and guilt they had carried for so long.” In time, He so lovingly led them through forgiveness and repentance. They asked God for forgiveness and asked each other for forgiveness. Truett and Lea also discovered that both had always felt their child was a boy.
“We decided to give our son the name Matthew, and in that moment, we asked our son for his forgiveness as well,” Truett remembers.
Healing After Abortion: A Journey of Forgiveness
After years of carrying the shame of abortion, they traded this weight for the joys of God’s love and grace. When they brought darkness to light, they could finally share the love, grief, and heartache with God, the son they’d never met, and each other. They experienced the kind of love, mercy, and grace in that moment that only Jesus Christ can elicit. Only He can bring love and light to a situation as dark as abortion.
Forgiveness is the doorway to healing, restoration, and freedom. “That night, we began the path of forgiveness. We could finally talk about our son Matthew. We could think about him. We could speak his name and honor his life,” Truett said.
Almost 20 years after their encounter with Jesus, Truett, and Lea believed it was finally time to tell their six children about the abortion and ask for their forgiveness. All the children were grown and married. Truett and Lea knelt before each of their children and their spouses, confessed the sins of their adultery, the abortion of Matthew, and of the deception and lies that had hidden it from them, and asked their forgiveness. The Lord was so gracious in those tender moments as He healed a brokenness in their family and revealed Matthew as a brother to his siblings.
1 John 1:7
Only light can drive out our dark past and sins, and that light is Jesus Christ. He is the light of the world.
In 2007, Truett and his wife attended a Rachel’s Vineyard Retreat that offers ministry to post-abortive men and women. During their time there, they encountered Jesus in an even deeper way than they had at their dinner table many years before. In those moments with Him, they released the pain and regret they carried from the abortion, not only the pain they individually carried but also the grief from the pain they had witnessed in each other. It was a beautiful time as husband and wife and as father and mother. Near the end of the Retreat, they were asked to light a small candle representing their aborted child and place it in a large bowl of water, symbolizing giving their child to Jesus.
“We felt like Christ put Matthew in our arms that night. He became more than a name, more than a redeemed memory. He became our son. We felt like we embraced him in our hearts that night in a way we deeply longed for.”
Since that encounter with Jesus, Truett, and Lea serve as team members of Rachel’s Vineyard Retreats as they pour out what they so lovingly have received to others. As their story reveals, the healing and restoration of our hearts and lives by Jesus to live in freedom and peace is truly a journey – it is the most beautiful of journeys!
A Father’s Role in Abortion
While abortion is still a reality in the United States, millions suffer from the often-unacknowledged grief of losing a child to abortion. Many fathers have stories like Truett’s. After all, when a woman chooses to abort her child, it is not just the mother that suffers. If a million children are aborted each year, two million parents are directly affected by the loss of that child.
Fifty years after Truett and Lea made a quick, life-changing choice, the court overturned Roe v Wade, but our work is far from over. Truett believes that all men who are the father of an aborted child long for freedom from the pain of it and for peace with the child they lost and with the child’s mother. “The man is the head of the family, not because we deserve it,” Truett added with a chuckle, “but because God chose it that way.” As the head of the family, a man’s healing can help to heal and restore his family for generations. When our fathers heal, broken families won’t have to deal with the grief of abortion in silence and solitude.
How Men Impact Choices for Abortion
Men also play a vital role in impacting women’s choices for abortion. It’s crucial for us to acknowledge this and the effect abortion can have on men. You are not alone if you are a father facing an unexpected pregnancy. Matt Hammit’s Dare to be a Dad e-book will equip you to be the dad you are destined to be. If you have experienced the traumatic effects of abortion, we hope Truett’s story inspires you to bring darkness to light. If you feel the Lord prompting you to pursue healing after abortion, women’s clinics across the US offer free post-abortive care to both women AND men.
Truett isn’t the only father to have dealt with abortion regret. Read another father’s story of how a one-night stand led to an abortion he could never forget.
