Guest Post from Author Dianne E. Butts--on a very important topic

Deliver Me: Hope, Help, & Healing through True Stories of Unplanned Pregnancy

By Dianne E. Butts

She stares at the test strip, palms clammy, breathing uneven. She's never felt more alone. Tears blur her vision. Panic edges in.

An unplanned pregnancy can leave emotional wounds that take years to heal. The options are many: abortion, adoption, keeping the child. The questions are even more: How? Why? Where can you go for help? What do you do?

Deliver Me: Hope, Help, & Healing through True Stories of Unplanned Pregnancy explores each of the choices and their after-effects, highlighting the most sensitive moments women and men in unplanned pregnancies face, and how it affects grandparents, friends, and other loved ones. You'll find:

· More than 50 intriguing true stories

· Facts and statistics about unplanned pregnancy

· Practical help

· Valuable resources

Whether you're a woman currently facing an unplanned pregnancy, a man whose partner is there, a friend or family member wanting to help, you'll find hope in the stories of others who walked this road and faced the same decisions.

Is your pregnancy experience in your past? Regardless of what its outcome was, you'll find kindness, compassion, and healing. You've dealt with the pain long enough. It's time to discover your healing.

A Message from the Author of Deliver Me

When I served on the board of directors of a small town pregnancy center, I witnessed both the agony of the women (and men, and families) involved in an unplanned pregnancy as well as the amazing stories of healing, redemption, and forgiveness.

Some of the people our pregnancy center encountered were devastated by the news of their own, or a child’s or girlfriend’s, pregnancy. Others were dealing with the agony of a past pregnancy, whether last year or ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.

I also witnessed many amazing stories of these same people finding hope because they were finding the help they needed in our pregnancy center. Needs were provided for. Resources were shared. Families were reconciled. Relationships were healed. And perhaps most importantly, people were finding forgiveness from God for past decisions and reconciliation with their Father in Heaven eawho loves them so incredibly and unconditionally.

These stories needed to be told. They needed to be shared. And so I set about asking women and men to share their stories. It took eight years, but Deliver Me is that collection of stories.

I live in the county in Colorado that has the largest birthrate to unwed mothers. Besides those currently in an unplanned pregnancy, according to current estimates if today’s trends continue, by the time they are 45 years old, 43% of women will have had at least one abortion.[1] That’s nearly half our population of women! And the numbers for men surely are comparable. Regardless of how vocal the prochoice crowd is, privately and silently many women (and men) grieve and agonize over an abortion in their past. Many who shared their stories for Deliver Me told me they thought this was the unforgivable sin, that God would never forgive them for what they had done. But they discovered they were wrong. God does and will forgive—even for this.

America needs to know. Women (and men) the world over need to know that God loves them, that He will forgive them, and that He is right there with them no matter what they have done or what they are facing right now. There are stories in Deliver Me that reveal how women and men have discovered this truth.

Besides the chapters that speak about women who considered abortion and women who experienced abortion, Deliver Me also has whole chapters devoted to stories of women who wanted to keep their child, who gave for adoption, whole families who were affected, an entire chapter of stories from men, and more. Women and men who work in pregnancy centers also share their stories about who they are and how they came to be involved in such work.

Besides the true stories, Deliver Me includes dozens of interesting statistics and valuable resources for practical help.

Deliver Me is available from your favorite bookstore. (Ask for ISBN: 978-0-9831649-0-6.) It is also available on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, other online retailers, and direct from the author at www.DeliverMeBook.com and www.SignedByTheAuthor.com. $14.99 (236 pages, released April 2011). Special discounts available for ministries; for more information contact Dianne at dbwrites@juno.com.

Author Dianne E. Butts has written for magazines for twenty years with over 275 articles in more than fifty publications including Focus on the Family magazine, the Salvation Army’s national magazine, and fiction in periodicals including Clubhouse. Her articles have appeared in Great Britain, Bulgaria, Poland, Canada, and Korea. She has contributed to seventeen books, and wrote her first book, Dear America: A Letter of Comfort and Hope to a Grieving Nation, after 9/11 (also available on Amazon.com and www.SignedByTheAuthor.com ). Dianne is also an aspiring screenwriter. When she’s not writing, she enjoys riding her motorcycle with her husband, Hal, and gardening with her cat, P.C. They live in Colorado. www.DianneEButts.com

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[1] “Abortion Facts,” The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, accessed 10/6/10, http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html.