In 24 hours...

I got almost 60 posts on that thread. Thank you to the contributors. In the past couple days I've learned A LOT. Among my thoughts are:

1. My faith in God as my Father and Jesus Christ as my Savior remains strong. I've learned more in my life when I'm challenged than any other time. To my anonymous poster, thank you (I guess) for that (but my rules still stands: anonymous posts will from here forward be removed!). I am proud to be serving my Lord, and will defend it whenever necessary. It's interesting. For about two hours yesterday afternoon I genuinely didn't know what to do. I was upset and angry. Cory and I took the boys for a walk - he thought I should just take the whole post down. I realized that I had two choices: back down (turn the other cheek) or stand up for what I believe in. I talked to my sister on the phone and as I breathed the cool fall air, I said a prayer to God that he'd send me an answer. Send me a friend. And I just knew truth would prevail. People rallied around me. You saw the posts. And I got emails. And I got phone calls. People who would never enter blogosphere came to check out the action (oh, and how many of you are out there lurking!?). I had such amazing peace by the end of the day. I quoted Obama from a few days ago last night when I told a friend I felt like I had "a righteous wind at my back." That is what the spirit feels like.

2. Call for action. We cannot sit and expect the world to change. Several of you ("What can I do? Can I start now?!") talked about DOING something to make the world better. Go out there and counsel people who are in unwanted pregnancies. Talk to people about the love of Jesus. Go and DO. It's so easy to sit around and talk about everything we want to see, but I think Katie posted Ghandi on her site earlier this week and said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." It's fun to say, but more important to do. Thanks to those posters who gave specific ideas of how to do that.

3. As you know, my mystery poster thought I shouldn't need anyone to back me up since I was so sure of myself. Here's the thing: we all need support. All the time. No one likes to feel like a lone soldier against an army of people. No one likes to feel like they're alone. So to those of you who commented, even (or especially) those with differing opinions, I thank you.

4. We are all very different people. We are going to have conflicting opinions, but I think that's okay. Better than okay, maybe. I hope we'll continue to learn from each other and challenge each other to think bigger. That post will remain open. Feel free to add to it as you see fit, but be nice.

Bits and pieces, right?