Two or three times a year, we are in urgent need of key items like diapers, wipes and formula.  We have started an email list of our most loyal followers who may be able to respond at these critical times of need.  Are you one of them?  Please email us and we would be pleased to add you to the list.

 

 

Spring’s First Heartbeat Honors Winter’s Last Breath

Dear Friends,

March is the month where we peek around the corner from winter cold to warm rains and the promises brought by Spring.  A season of hope, new life, new shoots and blossoms in nature. When we start seeing baby foxes, birds, frogs, and ducks, we are reminded of new life. It’s exciting to have new volunteers join the center and find out about their stories and families. It’s even more exciting when we see our pregnant momma’s come to the center pregnant to pick up a layette, car seat, crib, bathtub, diapers, and everything else they need to welcome new life.  Three months later they come in to pick up the next size clothes/diapers with their little one on their hip. We get to welcome them, maybe hold the little one while mom looks through nursing clothes.  We get to oooh and ahhh over the sweetness of momma and baby and encourage mom or dad in their parenting. This is why we are here. But MOST exciting and hopeful is a momma who finds she’s pregnant, is overwhelmed and in distress.  Then we are at our best – sharing MaRiH Center’s love  – and as a result, she chooses life and a new and different journey has begun.  That is why we are here! We have been an all-volunteer organization since 1974. To serve, love, walk with, and celebrate new life. Happy spring!  May you feel renewed hope.

Beth
Executive Director

A Volunteer Shares a Story of Hope

A young mom unexpectedly pregnant with her third child and in tears, recently came to MaRiH following encouragement from a sidewalk counselor at an abortion clinic. She felt trapped and entirely alone, certain that she didn’t have the emotional, social, or financial support to have her child. This sense of isolation is a staggering reality for so many of our moms, but it is not hard to imagine how a woman could feel trapped in a society that both recognizes her isolation and casually proclaims its only resolution: abortion. Imposing upon both mother and child what surely constitutes the greatest separation of all, mother from child, child from life.

Our culture has coarsely failed to identify this isolation at its source. Isolation is not something that can arise from within a mother or within her child. It is the creation of a culture brimming with commercials, campaigns, parades, and insidious policies asserting to her every single day that she is alone, that she should be alone and abortion is the “perfect” solution.

But the empty proclamation of severance resolving severance has been found wanting time and again. Isolation does not rise up to challenge isolation — love does.

Our firmest tenet at MaRiH is that “it is the right of every pregnant woman to give birth in dignity and the right of every child to be born.” This is love in motion. Love arising in haste and  leaping in the womb.

I had the immense joy of joining this mom as a translator on her first official doctor’s visit and sonogram at 18 weeks. We delighted in seeing her baby’s fingers and toes, in finding out that she was expecting a son (“I knew it!” she had announced), and in learning that the due date of her child was his dad’s birthday. This seemed to bring her extra joy and courage. Later on, we even found joy in making travel arrangements, in completing ceaseless piles of doctor’s office paperwork, and in spending late nights texting as we scoured the internet for a new family apartment — knowing that all of it was pointing to the same truth: she WAS NOT alone. Her journey was growing in new community, new resources, new hope and new life. Not because of volunteers or doctors or donations, but because of the sacred love she was nourishing. Accepting and embracing for herself and her baby. It was humbling to be present to this love.

It is our bittersweet privilege at MaRiH to be the first to ARISE in haste and greet a mom with joy, but we do not live in a world where it is easy or popular to do what these women do every single day. These moms are tougher than the messages the world is sending them, and they are the love that the world has deemed impossible. We — bolstered by the generosity, working hours, prayers and donations of so many — are simply here to ARISE, SERVE, AND LOVE.

MKM, A Volunteer

 

We Upgraded! We have upgraded to a new online giving portal powered by Stewardship Technology, a pro-life company.  The new portal is cheaper, fully incorporated into our website and easier to use!  The MaRiH Center is an all-volunteer organization and no person has or ever will be paid for their time or efforts – this helps keep our costs low.  We rely 100% on the generosity of our donors to operate and deliver on our important mission.