Sav-A-Life’s annual Sanctity of Human Life worship service, hosted by Ruhama Baptist Church, was held Sunday evening, January 21, with a standing-room only crowd. Following heartfelt singing led by Ruhama musicians, Katie and Jacob Malone held listeners captive as they related their challenges and blessings as parents of their severely handicapped, 15-month old daughter Nora Rose.
Katie, a speech therapist at Go Play Therapy Center in Fort Payne, spoke first as she related the flood of emotions which marked this young couple’s learning of Nora’s condition of Trisomy 13 during a pre-natal ultrasound. Her honest narrative of absorbing the diagnosis, being told her baby probably would die, and probing her Christian faith after being advised to consider abortion revealed how she and Jacob witnessed God’s faithfulness as the pregnancy continued. Nora was born with a bilateral cleft palate, blindness, muscular problems, and a large hole in her heart. Yet she defied medical predictions, survived a complicated heart surgery, and has continued to grow and to display a lively personality.
Jacob, pastor of Lathamville Baptist Church near Crossville, is employed by Polymer Industries in Henagar. His message focused on three life lessons that God has revealed to these first-time parents. His first point explained that Nora’s condition reminds us that the entire human race is beset with suffering and abnormalities because of mankind’s sin. Secondly, in telling how Nora cannot eat or sit up without assistance, Jacob shared his proud, fatherly excitement about her smallest accomplishments and drew the comparison to God’s pleasure in the redemptive work accomplished by His son Jesus Christ. In his final point, Jacob shared with loving devotion that Nora would always need him for almost everything. Likewise, God loves it when His children need him and depend on Him.
Dr. Calvin O. Sanders of Dawson shared this observation of the evening’s messages, “What will stick with me is that I am one of God’s ‘Nora Roses’ and that I can do nothing on my own. As Christians, we need to depend on God for everything.” Women’s Care Center Director Anita Johnson stated, “The service was possibly the best one I’ve attended…meeting a goal set 25 years ago to unify and equip area Christians through cooperative ministry. Numerous denominations experienced unity in Christ and in praising Him for life—now and in eternity.”
Sav-A-Life of DeKalb County, Inc., is a non-profit agency operating the Women’s Care Center in downtown Fort Payne . The Center offers free and confidential services in a loving environment to women, men, and families facing an unplanned pregnancy The site also operates a clothes closet for families in need of maternity and baby items. Prenatal, parenting, and post-abortion classes for women and men are taught at the center. This organization’s ultimate purpose is to affirm all life—both physically and spiritually—by sharing the love and truth of Jesus in word and deed.