Through a Client's Eyes

My husband and I are MORE than grateful for connecting with Care Net.  Everything happens for a reason and while I couldn’t understand why we unfortunately lost our first baby last October, I knew that God must have had a plan for us.  I just didn’t understand… didn’t know why all these bombs were going off in our lives…  I had never felt so alone and so upset and scared.

Time certainly helps to heal but after finding out just three months later that we were pregnant again, we were excited, scared, nervous, and very anxious.  I didn’t have health insurance…. I had no medical support and all I wanted to know is if this second baby – rather this second miracle - was okay or not.  Was there a heartbeat, was I going to lose this baby too, was I doing something wrong?   I knew all the worrying and anxiety was bad for both me and my baby, I knew stress was not good in pregnancy… my mind was racing and my heart unsettled.

Feeling so desperate and scared, I began to research pregnancy services in my area and discovered Care Net in Port Saint Lucie.   I truly believe God put this place on our path.  My husband and I were able to receive an ultrasound* on our very FIRST visit – and I know most places make you wait until you reach 20 weeks to get an ultrasound!   Receiving that ultrasound was like putting a Band-Aid on our hearts.  We were able to see that heartbeat, that flicker of light… I knew I had life inside of me… a feeling that I cannot even begin to describe.  On that very same first visit we were given ultrasound photos to take home and were also given a homemade patchwork quilt – so very nice! Not only that, we were able to meet with the Men’s Director, who just happens to be a local pastor and a peer-counselor who met with my husband and I together and also separately.  Through the love of God this place has shown us support, love, and caring in such a way that sometimes it’s unfathomable to think that such a place really exists right here on the Treasure Coast! 

I first entered Care Net in a state of terror and crisis. I knew that my emotions were getting the best of me.  I kept thinking about what had recently just happened to me and my husband and how it had begun to chisel at my marriage.  I felt that I didn’t have the support that I needed to grieve... I was pregnant again and supposed to be feeling all this joy and happiness, but fear was blocking everything.  Walking in to Care Net that evening changed everything – not only for me, but for my husband too.

I’m now 25 weeks pregnant and mountains of positive progress have been created and shaped for me, my husband, and my son – who will make his grand debut in September!  Care Net offers an Earn While You Learn Video Series.  We are able to choose from a wide array of interactive prenatal and postnatal video topics that we are interested in most as expectant parents.  As we watch videos we earn points and are then able to go ‘shopping’ in their store, which is amazing! 

All they want to do is help in any way they can – whether it’s with words or with items that we are in need of.  Sometimes our peer-counselors will watch videos with us, which is really comforting because we can pause the video, comment and share thoughts and ideas which is helpful - and quite fun actually too!

We look forward to our weekly meetings.  Emails are shared throughout the week and we feel like we have met some truly incredible people.  People that care about us and pray for us.  These people have helped me enjoy my pregnancy and have helped me in my marriage as well through counseling and through the Bible – amazing blessings have come our way!  I no longer hold onto this fear and anxiety because they have helped us to feel and to KNOW that it’s all going to be ok.   Again, we are grateful to Care Net and to God for allowing us to connect with such a beautiful and spiritual place.  We are also excited to continue to connect with them – even after our son is born!

  

We’d like to send our appreciation to all the staff and volunteers that have helped us.  We don’t know where we would be without all the hugs, support, and love.  THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts!

*(Care Net offers free ultrasounds on a limited basis.)

What About Him?

By Kevin Pierce

      Director of Men's Services

“It was a big blessing for us to go to Care Net the other night and to feel the support that you all provide. It was a blessing meeting you and getting to chat a bit, I really didn't expect there to be the 'guy support', that's really cool.”-client email.

These words bring joy.  We hear them all the time from Dads who are clients at Care Net.  Another Dad came with his partner for a pregnancy test.  I told him he was a Dad.  I asked him if he knew what it took to be a good one.  He said “I have no idea.”  I got to share with him not just his responsibility, but the honor and value that comes to him, when he gets equipped to be a Dad.

Our male clients are told by culture that their view and opinion is unimportant, or unwanted.  Yet almost 70% of the women who come to a Care Net say that the most important opinion to them is that of the father of their baby.  If he is connected, supportive, and equipped, there is a very high likelihood she will carry and parent their child.  The National Fatherhood Initiative showed that pregnancy loss was cut in half when there was a supportive Dad in the mix. Studies on fatherhood show that kids in homes without a present, equipped, active Dad are 279 times more likely to engage in destructive or harmful behaviors later in life.  Present, equipped Dads result in healthier, better educated, more confident, and more successful children.  To those “secular” statistics, we would add the principles and history in Scripture.  God’s redemption plan for this broken world has good Dads as a primary component.  That is why culture has Dad as a primary target.  That is why Dad is so critical to us at Care Net.

Our Dads working with Dads at Care Net get to see amazing, world changing things.  Young men come, feeling powerless and disconnected.  They are quickly shown that they are quite possibly the game changers for their partner and unborn child.  They hear an encouraging voice, telling them they are capable.  It is true that knowledge is power.  One of our favorite things is to help a man understand what is happening to the mother during pregnancy, so that he becomes a resource for her.  His eyes widen, and you can see the confidence increasing in him.  We teach our Dads what it means to love both mother and child, from God’s perspective.  When this happens, he becomes incredibly effective, because his “why” for doing things gets set.  He learns about budgeting, and discipline, and dealing with his own issues in healthy ways.  He moves toward becoming the man God needs him to be in a difficult situation, even if he did not start right.  The most incredible thing we get to do is watch some of our Dads meet Jesus for the first time, or surrender again to him.  When they come into right relationship with their Heavenly Father, and get connected to a disciple making church, we see progress to our ultimate goal.  A family, made whole in Christ, growing together.

I sat across the room from a man who had agreed to an abortion.  His words were powerful.  He talked about the ending of a life, but he was more broken by the fact that he had “failed to protect her (the mother).”  He shed tears as he asked for her forgiveness, and she extended it. As heartbreaking as that was to hear, it showed that he got it with regard to who he is supposed to be.  As he connects with us through our abortion recovery program, we can help him deal with failure, and then see it become motivation to be that man he is supposed to be.

That client, in our initial meeting, said “Boy. You are all about the baby here, aren’t you?” I told him that the child was important to me.  So important, that my whole focus was to be a support for him.  He looked puzzled.  I explained that if I can make a difference in his life, I get three for one.  He becomes the Dad, and husband or partner he needs to be.  She has a man in her life that provides what she needs, and only he can give.  Their unborn child gets an engaged and equipped Dad.  As they receive all we offer, and embrace what God has for them, a healthy family that stands and stands out in this culture gets developed.

I love the women that come here.  I love the children they carry in their womb.  But the calling for me, and the other men who volunteer at Care Net, is to always ask “what about him?”

JESUS Cares for Care Net

By Nanette Maldonado
     Community Liaison

Jesus cares for Care Net.  We care at Care Net and we don’t stop caring at Care Net. When I think about a burning fire, I think about us at Care Net.  I think about the staff and the volunteers that serve and the fire we all need inside of us to do what we need to do.  Why is this necessary?

It’s necessary because…

 

There are HARD days and we can’t quit because of them, we need to overcome them.

Prayer covers us on those hard days.  It fuels the fire in our hearts to overcome them.  If you didn’t know this, you know now, we gather every morning to pray together.  In fact, we pray frequently, and we don’t stop when we lock the door at the end of our day.  We keep praying.  The faces we see and the hearts we hear from are not forgotten.  We move from heart to heart, and we hurt when our clients hurt, and we rejoice when we see our clients rejoice when God moves in such a unique way, in unique situations.  Crisis turned into triumphs.  Trust me, there are days when our joy is zapped, when our hope is losing its grip on our ANCHOR and that’s when we run to sit with the ONE who gives REST and PEACE.

We won’t quit, because He won’t relent.  Quitting is not in the DNA of Care Net and who we are.  I mention again, prayer fuels our fire.  Prayer is the very thing that keeps us seated in passion during the victories, through the defeats, with the lost, and in gain.  We do have both, you know.

   

You see, those are the times when the response of our prayers unfold and we have to trust God with the results we see.  Especially the times we did all we could.  Times when we hoped the situation would change but didn’t, or the end result wasn’t exactly what we wanted it to be.  But GOD. 

There are times when we feel we missed the mark, or didn’t say what we needed to say, or what we said was not enough...once again, what do we do…we pray.  We care at Care Net.  You see, we don’t work alone.  We work with someone else…JESUS.  He is the BOSS.

He invites us.  In everything we do, we invite Him.  From the music we play in our waiting area, to the receptionist we have answering calls, to the counselors we have speak with our clients….it is all orchestrated by God.

God brings the clients to our doors.  He is there when a mother who thinks her daughter may be pregnant Googles and finds Care Net.  He knows.  What about the young couple that waits for the results of a pregnancy test, and finds out they are pregnant, when they themselves are barely on a first name basis.  He knows.  What do we do?  We PRAY, we LOVE, we LISTEN and we share information that calls for wisdom.  God knows and He leads.  He is faithful, even if the mother takes her daughter to get an abortion after meeting with us, and when the young couple decides to give their child up for adoption.  He knows.

   

I end with this in mind, we can’t do what we each do here at Care Net without HIM.  We see a lot and we hear a lot.  We get bogged down and we have days when we are on cloud nine!  We do it all for HIM and we serve the unlikely, the unlovable, and the unreachable.  Prayer sustains us and that is what fuels us to continue the good fight.

  “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.  (Please continue to read passage, John 15:5-8)

Stay connected to HIM: Prayer, Trust, Faith and Love fuels our fire, what about yours?  

STEP IT OUT!!

By Willow Sanders
     Director of Student Services

I can't pinpoint why this story (click to read) hits home so hard but I'm definitely on the verge of tears.

Maybe it's because I can imagine full well the pain & courage it took for her to 'come out' about her pregnancy afraid of the way she'd be received. Maybe it's because there are days I sit on the receiving end of that conversation with sweet, Christian kids who are afraid of how they'll be received. Or maybe, more organically, it’s because I can’t believe so many years after the sexual revolution we’re here, so often, as a church, horribly dealing with this issue.

Yet, if I sit for a moment, I KNOW it is because I was received so well when it was me.

We can all point to moments in our Christian walk when we missed the mark in our response to sin. Some grander than others. Could be the smaller moments seemed more inconsequential than the larger missteps, but make no mistake, they all led to something.

Honestly, I can always remember the moment like it was yesterday. I don’t know why that is but it just is, and what I remember about the moment isn’t the shame I felt in knowing I had a front row seat to the decisions I’d made, which I’m confident was flowing like a river. It wasn’t the position I now saw myself in that days before was just a dream. What is seared into my memory is the way I was received by those who had for days, weeks, months, years been trying to lead and guide me in ways that would produce good fruit in my life. It was total Grace.

As a ministry and a large society, we have the chance to offer that same grace when we see those who face any type of misstep in their own life. It’s crazy to me how so often we see culture pushing our young people to become sexually active, then leaving them by the wayside when the consequences come. We, as the church, are not supposed to be like the world. Our response needs to be one of well thought out love and compassion!

It got me thinking that especially in this area of out of wedlock pregnancy we have three key things we can do:

STEP UP

We are all able to do something when it comes to this issue. Could you be called to volunteer for a ministry that reaches out to this often-maligned part of culture? Could you spend some time in prayer on this issue? Could you be a voice out in your community or social media arena to share your story? Maybe you can STEP UP, speak into, and call out the strong in our young men who might easily just fade away in this whole scenario.

STEP OUT

This area can be so controversial in our faith-based community. We feel uncomfortable speaking out in favor of something that was the result of someone’s willful sinful behavior. May I remind you that this “something” is a BABY created in the image of God. It is our obligation as image bearers ourselves to speak life whenever and wherever we can. So STEP OUT of your comfort zone and ask God how you should respond when faced with this situation. 

And lastly, STEP A-SIDE…

Nope, not what you think. What if you stepped a side one of these young people going through this and let them know that they can do this! That God is for them, and with Him ALL things are possible even in the darkest of circumstances. Give them the courage to face one of the hardest, most rewarding journeys of their life with Hope instead of fear.

All this leads me to encourage you to seek out a pregnancy center in your area, ask your local church if they have ever heard of Embrace Grace, research both, and then listen to how God tells you to take that next STEP.

It begins on May 16 at midnight and goes to midnight on May 17! 

Thank you for providing a confidential place for families in crisis!  For the past 27 years women and their partners facing an unplanned pregnancy have come to Care Net Pregnancy Services of the Treasure Coast for safe and confidential assistance free of charge.  Because of the medical services, community connections and material supplies offered to them in our centers we are better equipped than ever to increase their life-affirming options.

On May 16, 2017 at midnight to May 17th, at midnight, Crisis Pregnancy Center of the Treasure Coast Inc. (DBA Care Net Pregnancy Services of the Treasure Coast) is participating in the Great Give Palm Beach & Martin Counties, a 24-hour online giving event led by the United Way of Palm Beach County, Achieve, Nonprofits First and United Way of Martin County. Great Give 2017 is designed to raise as much money as possible for local nonprofits in just one day!

Plus, each donation made during the 24-hour period will be amplified by bonus pool dollars and hourly prizes!

We hope you will consider donating to Care Net by following the link https://www.greatgiveflorida.org/care-net-pregnancy-services-treasure-coast

Or go to www.GreatGiveFlorida.org and enter a search for Crisis Pregnancy Services of the Treasure Coast which will take you to Care Net’s page on May 17^th.  

24-hours CAN change our community!

Last year, Care Net ministered to 4977 clients and students in our centers and classrooms all across the communities in which we serve. 

Your gift can go far in reaching our community with the truth that saves lives and the love of Jesus Christ that transforms. Care Net continues to see ministry growth each and every year.  Give to keep our community strong.  Together we can make a difference one life at a time. 

Sincerely,

Sue Chess

Executive Director 

Care Net Pregnancy Services of the Treasure Coast

965 SE Federal Hwy.

Stuart, FL 34994

(772)871-2211

Divine Appointment or Coincidence?

By Rayma Zugel
     Lead Center Director

Have you ever had a "divine appointment"?

A divine appointment is a meeting with another person that has been specifically and unmistakably ordered by God. Psalm 37:23 states, "The steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord." I can tell you that seeing God set up these "appointments" is a thrill that is beyond comparison.

Picture this:  Two peer-counselors at Care Net, two clients walk in simultaneously. The clients fill out their paperwork and the Receptionist takes the clipboards back to the peer-counselors. “Who will take who?” she asks, and just like that, a divine appointment set by God before the foundations of the earth takes place.

Then there’s the client who didn’t show for a scheduled appointment but walked in on a day when she would pray to receive Jesus as Savior because of the obedience of the peer-counselor that is volunteering that day.

We have seen things like this happen over and over again. Some would say coincidence; we say an appointment set by God.

At Care Net we just finished with our Spring training for new volunteers. Here was another Divine Appointment.

We set a date for registrations to be in by so that we can be sure we have all the materials we need for each individual. That date had come and gone. The day before the training was to start I received a call from a man interested in volunteering. I explained to him the need to attend the volunteer training. Oh but wait, he has plans that first weekend. “So maybe,” I tell him, “you can take the next training in October,” which is hard for me to say because of the need for volunteers, especially for men, in both of our Centers. His next words surprise me. He is going to see if he can back out of his previous engagement. When I spoke with him the day of training, he told me he will be there as well as his wife. The engagement they were going to was changed so that they did not need to be there, because God has plans for them at Care Net.

Have you felt a pull on your heart for volunteering at Care Net? We would be happy to do a 4 hour mini training that can get you started making changes in the lives and hearts of many of the men and women we see. Then in October, you will take the full training and answer the call God has placed on your heart. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:8).

Are you the “Me”? 

A Day for Fun and Faith!

By Sue Chess, Executive Director

Sitting across from a young woman who attends one of our area churches, I sought to discover what her belief was about the baby she was carrying and considering aborting.  It can help to step back from the crisis and examine what a belief was before the present circumstances loomed larger than life--literally.  “I know my church believes abortion is wrong,” she stated, “but I don’t know why.”

With that statement, she brought into stark contrast the need within our culture for open dialog and integration of why we believe what we believe.  In NO area is this more revealing than in all points of human sexuality, including God’s opinion of when life begins.    If this young woman’s beliefs, or rather her Church’s beliefs, had reason and foundation in her own mind, she would not have been trying to sort it out when faced with an unplanned pregnancy.

   

That is why we promote the Walk for Life as one way to weave fun and faith into a strong sanctity of human life ethic.  Use the event to talk about the way that Care Net “saves babies.”  You and I realize that it is so much more than that. If a child is saved from abortion, then a mom is saved from a case of complicated grief where she will have to resolve the forbidden grief that is the “complication” in allowing herself to feel sorrow over the loss of her child.  How can she give herself the right to grieve when she was the one who made the choice? She’s been set up for a crisis of conscience.  The father may have been complicit in her choice or passive.  In either case, he will also have complicated grief for different reasons.

A quote from an article by Feminists for Life’s then-Vice President of Communications, Frederica Mathewes-Green, writing in The American Feminist’s precursor Sisterlife makes this point so well:

“For the question remains, do women want abortion? Not like she wants a Porsche or an ice cream cone. Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg, a woman who seeks an abortion is trying to escape a desperate situation by an act of violence and self-loss. Abortion is not a sign that women are free, but a sign that they are desperate.”

Preparing our children for desperate moments should be part of their early training. By the time a child reaches the age of 12, their belief about when life begins is set.  What easier, positive, or more proactive way can you do this then to refer to a woman’s pregnancy as “a baby” and discuss the facts about a baby’s development in the womb.  Just begin with the positive option of LIFE.  In very fundamental ways, explain it or even show them using the app we use with our clients. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/little-one-pregnancy-guide/id694348619?mt=8  

Talking about babies does not have to end up with a discussion of sex, either.  Innocence is its own protection and as your child asks more questions, you can give more answers.  If you need to research, do not forget about Care Net as one of your resources. Make sure that Willow Sanders, our Director of Student Services, who is a certified sexual risk avoidance specialist, has been to speak to the youth at your church. We love to do “field trip” type visits with small groups at both of our Centers where we talk about life in the womb, the developing baby, and offer them a tiny 12 week old fetus model as a gift.  There is no charge for this visit.  We simply want to give them information that can prepare them to be a “first responder” should a classmate share a guilty secret with them someday.  They will know the truth! 

You may have heard of the amazing organization called “Students for Life” that had a very large group at the March for Life in DC this year.  Did you know that March 2^nd is National Pro-Life Chalk Day?  Check that sweet movement out right here www.nationalprolifechalkday.com.  If you want to feel encouraged find this movement on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/studentsforlife/ 
Our students are beginning to lead the way.

 

Since most of us cannot attend an event in DC, we invite you to involve your family in an event that will help you weave fun and faith into their belief system right here on the Treasure Coast.  We have heard from many young people that the day of our Walk for Life is one they look forward to immensely.  With a great praise band, fun booths set up and run by our area Churches and businesses, a petting zoo, great food, and face-painting, along with a Walk with purpose, we’ve set out the best kind of day for have an event where Fun and Faith meet perfectly.  Begin your family’s conversation about life before the Walk.

If the young woman I spoke to a few years back had attended a Care Net Walk for Life, or been involved with Students for Life, do you think she would have wondered why her church thought abortion was wrong?  Or would she have absorbed a sanctity of human life ethic into her faith that prepared her for her own life.

Sometimes it is the simple things of life that are the most profound.

It is not too late to make the Walk for Life on March 11^th a part of your family’s fun times that will set you up for one of those very important conversations.

 

Start now by heading over to our secure website www.WalkForLifeTC.com and click on the “Participate” link.  Join the movement and start the conversation with your family.  You’ll be glad you did.  Here are some pictures from last year’s great event to prove it.  We hope to see you in these pictures next year!

A SHADE-Y Substitute

By     Willow Sanders. SRAS
         Director of Student Services

Although it has been more than two decades, I can remember so vividly the time I ‘needed’ to go see my college boyfriend. I was a college sophomore and everyone KNEW he wasn’t good for me. I picked every reason I could to reject their opinions. They’d give a really valid reason, I’d dismiss it immediately. Pushed into a corner, I began to hide my interactions with him. It became so hidden that the small ways became big ways of deceitful behavior. So much so that one night in February, I waited until my mother had gone to sleep, quietly put the car in neutral and backed it out of our parking complex until I was a safe distance away. Turned the car on and thought to myself, “I’m home free! I can go see him and be back before my mom ever knows what happened. No harm. No foul.” Or so I thought. Cue the snow. We lived in upstate NY and during the winter months snow could come out of nowhere. What I thought I was keeping secret was about to have very visible results. On my way to his apartment, I ended up in a snowbank. Stuck. I had no choice but to call my mom in the wee hours of the morning. She had to call a friend, since her car was ‘otherwise occupied’. I never got to my boyfriends that night. The very thing I was trying to avoid, being found out, was now very apparent public information. I was totally embarrassed but more upsetting than that was the look of disappointment on my mom’s face.  Not something I enjoyed at all. It was a hard lesson but cemented what I’d heard a hundred times over “What we do in the dark, will eventually come to light.” I now had a very REAL visual for that.

It’s happened dozens of times before. Girls hiding miniskirts in their backpacks. Boys hiding magazines under their beds. I can even remember the day I found out someone I held on a ridiculous spiritual pedestal was a smoker. Like somehow, she as a Christian wasn’t supposed to struggle with common things. I had literally NEVER seen her smoke. Like EVER NEVER and I’d known her for almost a decade.  It was the first time I really contemplated in my young naïve life that there really ARE things we do in secret that we’d never do in public. 

In the early years of teaching sexual risk avoidance education, I heard a term that really stuck with me:  Publicly Private.  Hands down the best use of an oxymoron I’d ever encountered.  We encouraged young people to set boundaries. To keep their behaviors marked by this thought, “Don’t do something in private, you would be hesitant, ashamed, or horrified to do in public, say in front of your grandmother.”  

So when I began again to see Fifty Shades in the news for their new movie release, my heart leapt within me.  I KNEW there would be scores of women (young to older) that had NEVER gone publicly to see the movie last time but maybe rented it and are totally ready for round 2.

The current level of porn saturation has led to a functional apathy about our porn habits.  According to a study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, about 77 percent of Americans say they watch porn at least once a month.  In contrast though, the same study found that only 29 percent actually believe watching porn is morally acceptable.

I sat thinking, “It’s nothing new really, is it? We are still looking for ways to do the taboo.” Have we not traveled so far from those miniskirt and magazine days? Have we not learned that what is done in dark will be brought to light? Is the subtle way we try to deceive ourselves to what quiet disobedience does to us really that different in 2015? I had to ask myself the same questions. Does my daily diet reflect the horror found in my heart or have I succumbed to the cultural standard. Would it be different for me? Would I settle for not thinking much had changed or view it as not much different from years gone by influences? Yet, with this movie EVERYTHING is different.

We live in a sex saturated culture; have been since the late 60s, increasingly worsening with each decade. Yet I think the issue of WHY we would shun going to the movie publicly but invite it into the confines of our home goes much deeper than just sheer entertainment. Typically, when something gives us pause there is a reason. More typical in today’s culture is to put that ‘something’ to rest. To pretend it isn’t important. To void any connection to the ‘why’ of the ‘something’. I think back to the Garden, when the serpent was tempting Eve. He wasn’t (as we can surmise) loud and bold. He was quiet, shifty, “Shade-y” if you will. Had Eve stood boldly, not given an audience, things could have been quite different. We have, through the many lessons taught within, opportunity after opportunity to do things differently.

It is so easy in our world today to be wooed to compromise. To think if we are keeping it to ourselves, what harm is it really doing? But stripping down, to the core, the design, pure and simple, of God’s intent for sexual intimacy isn’t yielding great results. Through inviting a steady stream of sexual images, innuendos, and false messages into our homes, we are playing right into the hands of a cultural world view that is destroying the fabric that makes sex so beautiful in the first place.

Sex is beautiful. Not dangerous. Sex is precious. Not a commodity. Sex is a gift from God. Not a tool for marketing purposes. The heart and mind are delicate things. Easily turned and twisted. Sex has been so twisted in the hearts and minds of our society that movies like Fifty Shades are calling us to trade in intimacy for domination, beauty for brutality, freedom in sexuality for shame, and most importantly, godly standards for worldly ones.

Porn, a polar opposite of the love and sex God created, can make lasting and deep impacts on human relationships.  Relevant magazine shared this: “Pornography makes it more difficult for your brain to experience pleasure. A study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology found that men and women who looked at porn were less likely to be satisfied with their partner’s appearance and their sex life as a whole.”  Not surprised by this at all. We cannot take a substitute and a horribly poor one at that, for something as powerful and meaningful as sex and expect it to not have major life altering effects.

Thinking back to those times when secrets were kept or truth was ‘omitted’, I can clearly remember knowing there was something not right about it. Hence, the freedom I sought, false freedom I found out, actually bound me to the very thing I was trying to escape from inviting shame to the game. Accepting the fact that this movie can be viewed in the safety & secrecy of our own homes changes nothing about the impact that diluted, disfigured messages in movies like Fifty Shades create in the hearts and minds of women. Our culture deserves more. Our friendships deserve more. Our marriages deserve more. Our husbands deserve more. And ultimately we, as women, deserve more.

So when you pass the theater or video aisle, are tempted to click the ‘Add to Cart’ button or buy that ticket…think again. Don’t be fooled by culture’s push to give us a counterfeit version of sex, love and intimacy.  Remind yourself: YOU DESERVE MORE than some Shade-y substitute!

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All Hands On Deck

by Rayma Zugel

Lead Center Director

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” Phil Jackson, President of the New York Knicks.

What is teamwork? The dictionary describes teamwork as “work done by several associates with each doing part but all subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole.”

Care Net Pregnancy Services of the Treasure Coast has two centers, one in Port St Lucie and one in Stuart, both governed by our local Board of Directors. We currently have 9 staff members and over 60 volunteers. The world might look at our organization and imagine a “trickle down” order of importance, but we know the importance of everyone doing their part as part of the whole team.

At Care Net we must work as a team and that was clearly illustrated in 2016. I was out of the office for extended periods of time due to 2 major surgeries, once for 6 weeks and once for 2 weeks.  As the Lead Center Director responsible for client services and the volunteers, that could have been a disaster. However all client services and volunteer needs were taken care of by other members of the team as needed.  Those times weren't easy on any of us, but as it is said, "A successful team beats with one heart."

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “No member of a crew is praised for the individuality of his rowing”.   It must be “all hands on deck” for a rowing team to win.  It’s the same here at Care Net.  Clearly teamwork is a Biblical principle.  Consider 1 Corinthians 12:12-26:

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ…the body is not made up of one part but of many.  Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.  If they were all one part, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many parts, but one body.  The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”…God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

It truly is “All Hands on Deck” here at Care Net to be sure God’s work is accomplished.