{Note:  This post is the final in a series on the retirement of Bryan J. Brown from pro-life leadership.  This initial post in that series is here.  Many topics of interest are discussed in the series, and especially in post #11. The post that follows is Bryan’s most personal post in the series.)

Closure is a great thing. I am a person who needs closure. The Donegal Corridor, the ArchAngel Institute and the events of the past two years have been closure for me.

Some, including me, mistook the founding of the Institute as a new beginning. It is a new beginning for 827 Webster Street. It is not a new beginning for me. It is instead my happy ending. A happy end to my twenty years in pro-life leadership. This is my final post in a leadership position with the Institute, and tomorrow, for the first time since January 13, 1989, I will not be in a leadership position in “the Movement.”

It all makes sense to me now.

I crossed the line on January 13, 1989 to support my then wife of eight and a half years. She threw herself into the “rescue-revival” with reckless abandon, serving as NorthEast Indiana’s founder and main administrator in its early years. I was startled by her zeal at that time. I later came to believe that it had to do with her own desire to somehow “get even” with the abortion industry. She seemed to view them as Josie viewed the Redlegs. She was a gifted and unique woman driven by an all-consuming mission.

That mission came to an abrupt halt when Susan Hill and George Klopfer sued us in federal court. She soon began to fall apart. All of the dysfunctions that plagued our relationship since the day we married came due in the months that followed. We were one, but we were not the same. Our marriage began to unravel.

On August 4, 1990, two days after our tenth anniversary, she gave me back the expensive watch that I had bought her. Through the tears she told me that she just could not accept it, that she did not deserve it. She then dropped the following bomb: “I just do not love you like a wife should love her husband. I am in love with your best friend.” My world began crashing to the ground. It felt as though my heart would explode.

“I am leaving you,” she sobbed, and then added, “one day you will have a wife who loves you like you should be loved and you will have five beautiful children. When that day comes you will thank me for what I am doing now.”

Thus began the end of my previous life in the Fort. The Culture of Death moved in for the kill. She moved out of the Fort and sought comfort in the arms of my former best friend. Pastor Wendell Brane’s (wisely uninvolved) wife afforded him the relative safety of being “judgment proof.” Thus the full wrath of the Culture of Death fell upon me. Their siege engines targeted my possessions, my house and my career. It all went by the wayside in the crash that followed.

I prayed and I prayed that divorce was a cup that would pass me by. I sincerely believed that it would not end that way. I really did not have much choice in the matter. She had our marriage undone with about as much formality and expense as a disturbing the peace prosecution.

I was left to struggle with the theological ramifications of the end of our marriage of ten years. Some told me that I could never marry again, that once was all that was allowed in this life. Others assured me that I faced no impediment to remarriage. I was amazed by the range of opinion on such an important topic among dedicated Christians.

I left the Fort a deeply wounded and broken man in the Summer of ‘91. I was rebuilt in Wichita as I found a catharsis in pro-life activism of a most urgent kind. And I was rebuilt when I met a woman who was willing and able to love me like a wife should. She helped me complete my journey from Evangelical with catholic leanings to Catholic with evangelical zeal. The Bishop’s marriage tribunal authoritatively answered the question of whether I was free to marry again, drawing from a legal system older than the Magna Carta.

Anne Walker is a pearl of great price. Gaining her was well worth all of the pain that was mine in the Fort. I could have no better mate in this life. She is my lioness.

As I have written elsewhere, I had been informed by medical professionals that I was sterile. For that reason I actually had laughed when my ex-wife “prophesied” that I would one day have five beautiful children. It was simply impossible. My Anne married me despite this physical impairment, believing in faith that God would grant us children, either through natural means or via adoption.

All can now understand why the birth of my fifth child, Judah Christopher, meant so very much to me two weeks ago. And why the timing of it all makes so much sense given my present circumstances.

So much is coming to a head this month.

Contrary to modernist opinion, children are a very good thing. Those who contracept and/or avail themselves to “the back up for failed contraception” (Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s description of abortion on demand) deny themselves the greatest blessing on God’s green Earth. As it is written, “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” Psalms 127:3

MY restoration is complete. I am a very rich man.

I have closure.

One of Susan Hill’s flagship abortion clinics, once the headquarters of the radical feminists of NorthEast Indiana, once used to drive me from all I then held dear, now hosts a budding post-abortion mentoring program and daily prayer meetings. In those prayer meetings Susan Hill, George Klopfer and others involved in the Culture of Death are lifted up to the Lord for healing. Its studio, located in one of the three former abortion chambers, now records the testimonies of those wounded by abortion and those who have sacrificed in the battle against the COD.

The very building that was used by the COD to drive me from the Fort was used by the Lord as a mission to bring me back home to share in my loving parents’ December years. And to enjoy the best set of siblings and sisters-in-law a man could want.

Closure at long last.

During our marathon prayer meeting on September 29, ArchAngel director Gloria Carrel prayed that the Lord would grant me direction “suddenly.” A series of suddenlies followed. Just three days later, on October 2, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, I was offered, in essence, the same position in industry that I enjoyed on January 13, 1989. It seemed that a portal back to the past had opened up. Our Lord certainly has a fine sense of humor! For the first time since January 13, 1989, I was being vetted to be something other than a leader in “the Movement.” I was invited, in fact, to focus all of my energies on something other than “the Movement.”

The timing was right. I have a wife who loves me and five beautiful children to raise in the fear and admonition of the Lord. The Institute is up and running and needs only your help to do great things.

Thus I must now stand down. Will you please step up?

Please support the Institute as a volunteer, a donor and/or a prayer partner. I believe that the Institute is posed to do great things through very fine officers, through an engaged board, through Retta Kohrman’s daily presence, through daily “prayer closet” gatherings, through the many great people now dropping in on a regular basis and, most of all, through the Spirit of the Living God.

That said, we are in need of more funding. A little bit goes a long way at the Institute. Details will soon be posted by the team taking over this website and bringing new focus to it.

The many counselors that Indiana has “blessed me” with have tried their best to figure me out. They have used the most advanced tools known to psychology. (My book is being written.) Heck, they should have just asked me about some of my role models. Hours of “discussion” and that never was asked! I took the Outlaw Josie Wales on as a role model after my wife, like his, was seemingly swept away by the Culture of Death. (Like our dear Phyllis, too.) Thus explains much of my zeal in Wichita and beyond, and especially in taking on the COD as it was manifested at George Tiller’s late term abortuary and through the University of Kansas’ abortionist training program. (The sources of most of my arrests for pro-life activism. The latter was shut down as a result.) Blue bellies and Redlegs, all of them. I fought until I was satiated. This clip pretty much sums up my thoughts on the subject.

Before this post closes, I must say a word to those who will be tempted to lay siege to the ArchAngel Institute, either in the near term or in the future…. be it Susan Hill, George Klopfer, some hired gun attorney, Indiana authorities, misdirected redlegs or blue bellies. Please do not disturb my retirement by firing on the Institute. Let me ride off into the sunset to look after my loving wife and five beautiful children. Rest assured that I recall how to use constitutional law as both a shield and a sword and can round up plenty of friends in high places to mount a defense that will be, I promise, formidable. We will fight until the Alamo is empty if gigantomachy is what you seek. I will come out of retirement to be the huckleberry of the legal adversaries of the Institute if such is needed, that I have promised the Board.

My twenty years has come due. My fifth child has been born. I am ready to lay down the mantle of pro-life leadership and ride off into the sunset to prepare a new generation of leaders. Whether it ends here or not is the choice of the Culture of Death. I give you the first move.

Oh, and suffer me one final dedication … this one is pure country and very much from the heart.

God’s best to all who serve Him.

Bryan

p.s. Also as to closure … I have perceived the need to report on my 18 year missionary journey from the Fort which started with a pilgrimage to Wichita to take part in the Summer of Mercy in 1991. About 100 NEIR activists joined me and Wendell for those consequential weeks. This series has granted me closure on the need to report on my 18 year journey as well. It is good to be back home.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 1:01 am and is filed under Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Swansong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.