Sid Roth - What Her Children Told Her in Heaven Will Make You Weep
My guest was raped, left violated and broken. Her life became a downward spiral of hopelessness and fear until a series of visions opened the way for her to be free of guilt, free of shame, I mean completely free! Now, it's your turn.
Sid Roth: Donna Grisham was born prematurely and literally had to fight for life to survive. As a child, her father took her and her siblings and left her mother stranded on the side of the road. And when she was 16, things got even worse. Donna, you look strong, healthy, vibrant. But what happened at 16?
Donna Grisham: Sid, the worst nightmare of my life happened. I happened to go to a bowling alley with a friend of mine. Her parents picked me up, and we went to the bowling alley, met two guys, and during the time we were bowling, she started talking to one of the guys, and she really got close, and she, they were talking about going riding. They wanted us to go riding. She came back over to me. She started talking. She said, "They want us to go riding". I said, "I can't do that". I said, "My grandmother told me not to leave the bowling alley". So she kept on and on, and as you know, sometimes when you're 16, peer pressure, you just fall into the peer pressure. So I left with them, and honestly, when I was leaving the bowling alley, as we were leaving, driving off, my thought was, "I'm leaving with two people, strangers, that I don't even know," and in the back of my mind, "What am I doing"? But I never said anything, so I went ahead, and the other guy that she liked wanted to go and pick up his truck, and so they stopped to pick up his truck, and she got out, and so I went to get out also, and she said, "No". She said, "He's going to take you back to the bowling. He'll take you back," and I thought, "I don't want to go with him. I want to go with you," and she said, "You'll be fine". He ended up pulling off, and when he pulled off, he drove a little ways and pulled into an alleyway and raped me. And, after that, he opened the door and said, "Get out," and he dropped me on the side of the road, and I remember, when I fell, I had skinned my arm up, and so as I'm walking, trying to get back to the bowling alley, and I wasn't very far from the bowling alley, so I finally made it back to the bowling alley, and as I made it back to the bowling alley, I went in, and I saw her and the other guy. They had already gotten back there. I don't even think I said anything. I just ran to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom, and she came in after me. After she came in, she said, "What is going on? What is your problem"? And I said, "He raped me," and she said, "No, just say what it was, Donna. It's consensual," and I said, "He raped me. Do you hear me? He raped me". And she just kept saying, "It's consensual," and she walked out, and I was standing there going, "Now, let me go back". When he dropped me off, the one thing he said to me, he said, "Nobody's ever going to believe you". Then the girl, my friend, supposed to be my friend, telling me that it's consensual, that it wasn't rape, and I was like, "It's happening, exactly what he said. She doesn't believe me. Who else is going to believe me"? So I took it, and I packaged it, and I wasn't going to say anything. I was never going to talk about this.
Sid Roth: But you had no choice because what happened?
Donna Grisham: I ended up pregnant, and I ended up 25 weeks pregnant, and I don't know if people realize how far along that is. A baby can survive at 25 weeks. My mom came. We ended up going to the doctor. I don't remember her driving to the doctor. I don't remember us walking in the doctor's office. I don't remember being in the doctor's office, Sid. The only thing I remember is walking out of the doctor's office, so I had to somehow get in that doctor's. As we were walking out, my mother was walking before me, and my mother said, "I ought to just leave and never come back," and at that time, at that point, that even broke me even more. That was just another breaking of, just tearing my, ripping my heart out. And she made the decision to take me to an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. I ended up having what they call a saline abortion. A saline abortion is where they inject the woman in the womb, and the saline, the solution, it's a salt solution that goes into the womb, into the abdomen, and it, the baby, drinks that, and it kills the baby, burns the baby from the inside out. And I started having pains, and my mom had to take me to the hospital, which was the Baptist Medical Center Hospital in Birmingham. They took me there. Now, let me go back to the Planned Parenthood clinic. Planned Parenthood, the clinic never told me that it was a baby. They told me it was a blob of tissue. So I give birth to a baby, 25-week baby. I end up, the nurse was supposed to close the curtain, and she didn't close the curtain. I happened to look over, and in a jar was my baby, and I lost it. I commenced to screaming. I commenced to, I was saying, "I want my baby". And nurses, interns, doctors, everything, was just, everyone was just coming around me, trying to quiet me up. "Be quiet! Shh, shh". And the doctor said, "Close that curtain now," and the nurse closed the curtain, and she got in my face. She said, "You shut up. You're going to be just fine," and when she said those words, I went black because I guess they must have gave me something to knock me out, and the next thing I remembered, I'm in the back seat of my mom's car on the way back.
Sid Roth: And there's a dark side, many dark sides of murdering children. But there's a dark side most people don't talk about. There is a trauma of the mother, and some are totally aware of it, and some live with it, and they wonder why they are the way they are. But you can't murder your own child without having a consequence. What was yours?
Donna Grisham: I lived with nightmares. Sid, I would have nightmares at night of babies drowning in blood, and I would try to save these babies, and I'd wake up with sweat. I would have sweat all over me, and I would just, all of a sudden, the reality, the reality of what I had done. It was like, "That's my baby". I ended up in the hospital numerous times, numerous times, trying to commit suicide. And I, and honestly, I look back, and I couldn't even do that right.
Sid Roth: But then at 24 she's pregnant again.
Donna Grisham: Yeah. I end up meeting this guy, and we're friends. I'm friends with his sister, and we, one thing led to the other, and it went too far, and next thing I know I found out I'm pregnant. And I wasn't going to tell my mom, and I was sitting at the table with her at her house, and all of a sudden, my mom looks at me, and she said, "You're pregnant". And I thought, "How in the world? How in the world"? And she said, "Mothers just know this," and so she said, "Everything will be okay," and I thought, "Okay". So we went to bed, got up the next morning, and she said, "Let's go shopping". Under the pretense of going shopping in Savannah, Georgia, from Brunswick to Savannah, we drive to Savannah, and I'm not thinking about anything. I'm just sitting there, just caught up in what's going to happen with my life, what I'm going to do, what choices I'm going to make, what, and we go, and we pull up to this place, and I'm still not paying attention, and I go to open the door. When I open the door, I saw the women inside, and as I looked in the faces of these women, some of these women, the look on their face, it was like you knew they were heartbroken. And then I heard, and, Sid, if it wasn't an audible voice, it might as well been. But I heard a voice say, "Run". Well, let me just say, the devil is not going to tell you to run from an abortion clinic.
Sid Roth: Of course.
Donna Grisham: And I didn't know the voice of God because I didn't know God at that time. I didn't even know if He was real, and so I stopped, and I went ahead with it, and the next thing I know I'm on the table, and I had, the second one was a suction abortion, and it's where they use a cranial tube, and they, it's like a vacuum cleaner that sucks the parts of the baby are sucked in. And I, as I laid there, and they turned the machine on, the moment they turned the machine on, I was like, "Turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off". And they didn't turn it off, Sid. It was too late. It was too late. And so I thought, "God, what have I done? What have I done to my babies"?
Sid Roth: Now, you went to pastor, and this pastor had the good sense to tell you you're forgiven.
Donna Grisham: Mm-hmm.
Sid Roth: But you couldn't accept it.
Donna Grisham: I couldn't accept it because I, first of all, didn't know if He was even, God was even real. I couldn't, growing up, I grew up in a church that didn't believe in healing, didn't believe in miracles, and I just thought, "What in the world do I need? So what can He do for me"? And I had such shame and such guilt, and I was so plagued by what I had done, what I had allowed that I didn't speak up, that I didn't say, "No, I don't want to do this". Forgiveness was nowhere. There was no way that I could be forgiven. That was my thought. "There's no way I can be forgiven".
Sid Roth: So what did you do with all those hurts inside of you?
Donna Grisham: Well, I buried them. I basically buried them, and like I said, I was living to die. I was on a road to destruction, on a path to destruction.
Sid Roth: And then it happened again. You got pregnant again.
Donna Grisham: I did. I was in love with the father, and whenever I found out I was pregnant and we talked, and we were going to get married. We even went and got blood tests because you had to get blood tests back then so went and got blood tests, and I went to stay with a friend, and he went back to his house and called him the next morning, and his mother said, "He don't want to talk to you".
Sid Roth: Oh.
Donna Grisham: And I thought, "Here we go again". I get myself in these positions, and where is God? People talk about God. Where is He? And so I ended up going to a, some ladies at the church that I was going to mentioned PTL and mentioned a girl's home. It's a -
Sid Roth: So abortion wasn't even in your vocabulary then.
Donna Grisham: No, no. The pastor, actually a pastor, another pastor, he actually said, "We'll talk to your mom, and we'll let her know. There's only two choices. It's either you keep your baby or you put your baby up for adoption. Abortion is not in the picture". And so I ended up going over to a friend's house, and so I end up on the floor, and I'm on my knees, and I'm really just having these thoughts in my head, and I said, I said, I said, "God," I said, "Look at the mess that I've made. So can You really, if You're real, can You do anything? Can You do anything with this mess that I've made of my life"? And so I heard inside, "Turn on the TV". And I thought, "Mmm, that's weird. That's not," and so I just ignored it, and I all of a sudden heard it again. "Turn on," and the remote is next to me, and all of a sudden, I look down, and the remote is there, and I'm angry, and I pick the remote up, and I turn the TV on like that. I said, and when the TV came on, Tammy Faye Bakker, Tammy Faye Bakker was signing a song that says, "He'll take your mistakes and turn them into a miracle". In that moment, I knew that God was going to, I knew that that was where I was supposed to go. And so I went to PTL, and 1 day after my meeting with my counselor, I go back to my room, and I'm on, I go back, and I just sit. I just lay prostrate on my face before God, and I just start crying. And I'm crying, and I said, "I don't know whether You're real or not, but if You are, I need to know what You want me to do". And all of a sudden, I had a vision, and in the vision, I saw Jesus, and I was walking towards Him, and I had a baby. I was carrying this baby, and I was walking towards Him, and I never once took my eyes off of Him. I just looked, and the moment I caught eyes with Him, His eyes, Sid, was the most loving, caring -
Sid Roth: Not judgmental?
Donna Grisham: Not judgmental. He didn't look at me like I was trash because the guy told me, he said, "You're nothing but trash. Nobody will ever want you," and when I saw those eyes, they just pierced my heart, and all of a sudden, I handed the baby to Him, and I looked at Him, and I walked away, and He smiled, and I smiled, and I turned and walked away. Well, when you have a vision, sometimes, I don't know about you, if you've ever had visions or dreams, you try to figure it out. So you try to put your little take. So my little take was, is, "I'm putting this baby up for adoption. That's exactly, I'm giving him to or giving the baby to the Lord, so I'm just putting him up for adoption". I go to sleep that night, and I wake up, and I have a pass to go back to Georgia to visit my mom. My mother picked me up, and we go to sleep that night. We talk. We talk about how the ride was and some different things, and we go to bed, and we get up, and she wants to go to breakfast, and so she said, "Let's go to breakfast," and she said, "But first I want to take you to the furniture store up around the corner from us". And she said, "I got something to show you". And so I get to the furniture store, and we're in the furniture store, and we're looking around. And as we're looking around, I'm just looking at different furniture. She said, "Donna, come back here". And so I went back there, and she's standing next to a crib, and she goes, "What do you think"? And honestly, Sid, I thought it was a trick question. I honestly thought it was a trick question, and I looked at her, and I didn't know what to think, and as I looked at her, she looked at me, and she said, "Donna, God has told me I'm to do whatever I can to help you raise this baby," and that moment was the beginning of not only restoration in my life. I had had that encounter with Jesus, and at that point, I realized, first of all, I realized Jesus was real. He was real to me, and then that moment with my mom, I began to see the pieces. I lived my life feeling like there was rubber bands around me, just tight, so tight, and I was so bound. I was bound by guilt. I was bound by shame. I was bound by just all the garbage the enemy would, I was no good. I was trash. I was never going to amount to anything. Never, and at that moment, He started breaking off those pieces, breaking off those rubber bands. They just started snapping, just started snapping.
Sid Roth: You needed, and you can picture this. She needed assurance that her two babies that were murdered in the womb ended up in Heaven. You can understand that. God is so good. What happened?
Donna Grisham: I was translated, and I know the difference between a vision, translation and dreams. And I happened to be in Jacksonville, Florida, with a small group of women, and we were at just a little place worshiping, and I was on this couch. And next thing I know, I'm sitting on this park bench, and I'm telling you, Sid, this park bench was unlike any park bench I'd ever seen. There was gold. I was so taken with this park bench, and then I happened to look up, and you can't describe the colors in Heaven. Things are so beautiful, but what I noticed is a little girl and a little boy. They come running up to me, and as they're running up to me, they climb up in my lap. And as they climb up in my lap, they start kissing me, one on one cheek and one on the other cheek, and they start telling me, "We love you, mommy. We love you, mommy. We love you". They said, "We forgive you". Or they said, first of all, they said, "We forgive you, mommy. We forgive you, mommy. We forgive you". Then they said, "We love you, mommy. We love you, mommy. We love you," and they said, "We'll see you again"! And then instantly I was back on that couch.
Sid Roth: Those of you that have had abortions, those of you that have had trauma, those of you that are living in shame or guilt or regret for anything, today is your day of freedom.
Sid Roth: Be right back.
Sid Roth: Donna, you say we don't have to live in regret, but yet we've done some horrible things. We know we're forgiven, but why do you say we don't have to live in it?
Donna Grisham: Because, Sid, it's okay to regret choices that we've made. It's okay to regret some decisions that we've made, but we don't have to live in that regret. We don't have to live in the pain of our regrets. I regret not standing up and saying, "No, I don't want to go through this. I don't want to have an abortion". I regret my abortions. But I'm not living in that regret. I'm not living in that pain. I've been set free from that. The scripture that just comes to me is Romans 8:1, "For there is therefore now no condemnation," no condemnation. When you have, you talk about an experiential knowledge. When I had that experiential, that moment with Jesus, His love, that scripture to me, nothing that the enemy says to me I receive because I know now exactly what that scripture means. That means whatever the Devil is trying to condemn you of, whatever the lie the Devil is trying to tell you, you don't have to receive it. He's trying to condemn you, and you have been, God has freed you. He freed you on the cross. When Jesus went to the cross, that choice you made went to the cross with Him. That decision you made, the sin you've been in, anything, and God wants you to know that you are not condemned. He nailed those sins to the cross. Don't let the regrets of your past determine your future.
Sid Roth: Say this prayer with me, and open yourself up to experiential knowledge of God. Out loud, repeat after me. "Dear God. I'm a sinner. For which I'm so sorry. I believe. The blood of Jesus. Is enough. To wash away every bad thing I've done. And in God's sight. He remembers my sins no more. Jesus, come live inside of me. I make you my Savior and my Lord. Amen".