Can a 5-minute video about a teenager with a crisis pregnancy change the hearts and minds of abortion supporters? This song and video, by the former lead singer of the group Kansas, has the potential to do just that.
If you’re a child of the ’70s and ’80s, you probably remember the prog rock band Kansas for songs like “Carry On Wayward Son” and “Dust in the Wind.” John Elefante became the group’s lead singer in 1981, the year the band was the top-grossing concert act in the world. Elefante later went on to have a successful career as a producer, with a number of the albums he produced earning GMA Dove Awards and Grammy Awards. Elefante also continued to perform; he has produced and/or performed on more than 100 major label albums.
Elefante is out with a new solo album, On My Way to the Sun (great reviews on Amazon), and one of the album’s singles, “This Time,” shares the story of his adopted daughter’s rescue from the abortionist’s scalpel.
The song tells the story of a 13-year-old girl with a crisis pregnancy. Terrified and alone, she falls asleep in the waiting room of the abortion clinic, where she sees the life of her unborn child unfolding in a dream:
There was a birthday cake and three candles
She was living in another world
She saw the little girl become a woman,
living in a happy home
Then she was suddenly awakened
by a voice that called her name
The clinic staff escorts her to the back — she has second thoughts. The nurses tell her, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.You’re still young, we see this all the time.” She cries out to God for help and asks for a phone to call her mother. “Find my baby a home!”
Right then the Lord began to speak:
“You’re not taking this one! She’s Mine!
She’ll grow up to seek My name.
You’re not taking her this time.
I started before time began.
Her name is written in the Book.
They didn’t have the power to take her life.”
The story is powerful and soul-wrenching.
Elefante, a Christian, seeks to raise awareness of the group Online For Life as he tells the story of his daughter’s birth:
“I can’t imagine life without my daughter, Sami, and it just breaks my heart that pregnant young women much like her birth mother, instead of choosing life for their babies, are denying them the chance to be born,” Elefante said. “If our song can in any way bring attention to this issue and encourage those who are considering abortion to choose life through options such as adoption, then we couldn’t be happier.”
Elefante said that although he took some creative license with the story, the basic points are true. In an interview discussing the song, Elefante said,
Her birth mother was ready to abort her and decided not to. … Her birth mother loved her enough to get out of the clinic, call her mom, and tell her she was pregnant. Her mom said, “I’m coming to pick you up right now,” and they found a home for that baby which is my home and I appreciate that very much.
In the interview, Elefante also alluded to the heartbreak that many families go through in the adoption process as they wait — sometimes for many years — to be chosen by a birth mother. In Elefante’s case, the birth father chose their family because he liked John’s shoes — black Dr. Martens. “He was only 15, she was 13. And I thought to myself … man … I went in there with all sincerity during that interview and we brought flowers in to the birth mother and the birth grandmother was there and it was a pretty big, deep occasion and I was as nervous as all get out,” Elefante said. “And the guy ends up picking me because of my shoes.”
Many adoptive parents, who want nothing more than to give a child a loving home, can relate to the sometimes random, illogical reasons they are passed over by birth mothers. This just compounds the tragedy and heartbreak of the 3000+ abortions per day in the United States.
The most important message of “This Time” is about the stories that will be forever unwritten. The birthday candles that will never be lit. The toddlers who will never take their first steps. The little girls who will never go to ballet class. The boys who will never toss baseballs in the backyard with their fathers. The adoptive parents who still have empty cribs in the nurseries. The scientists, the artists, the writers, and the statesmen whose mothers “got rid of the problem” and didn’t give those little ones a chance to find out the great — or very ordinary — things they would accomplish in their lives. The world will never know about those lost children, and “This Time” asks us to consider the lost potential of their lives.
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Elefante recently spent some time with Jay Sekulow, head of the American Center for Law and Justice. In addition to promoting Elefante’s album, Sekulow and a few friends got together for a jam session that included John Schlitt, who was the lead singer of Petra until they retired in 2005. (Elefante was Petra’s longtime producer.) Elefante can still hit the high notes on “Dust in the Wind.” (Who knew Sekulow had a coolness factor?)
http://youtu.be/5ezS7qnOQFQ
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