Right To Life Rally, 01-13

When I woke up at 4:15 this morning, my initial reaction was …. shall we say …. negative. However, by the time I had been up for two hours “alone” in the quiet stillness of the house, was on my third cup of coffee, and all the little people were stirring, I was seriously pumped for an awesome day! 😀 Turns out getting a jump on things really helps. As planned, we all jumped in the van at 8:15 and headed over to Physical Therapy with Oma. When she was finished at 10:00, we had two hours till the start of the rally downtown. Plenty of time to grab a bite to eat at Jack’s, and then drive downtown to figure out the whole parking situation.

I was SOOO prepared this morning, I printed out the map of downtown with the highlighted parking garages that I’d gotten from the rally website. I paraded around the house proudly showing everyone how clever I was (it was even in color!), set it down on the kitchen counter, and promptly forgot it existed until I was driving through downtown Phoenix on what I was rapidly deducing was the wrong side of Central. Thankfully we had phones, and one call to Paul corrected our course and we found our parking spot in the blink of an eye. Thanks, once again, to Pauline “Step-and-a-half” Holston and her handicapped tags, we got *rock star parking* immediately adjacent to the elevators.

We were even early enough that we could avail ourselves of the facilities at a nearby eatery before heading over to the Sandra Day O’Connor building, where the first 500 received a free T-shirt. Oh yeah! We made sure we were among the first 500. 🙂 The crowds steadily swelled until high noon when the rally began with an invocation by our Bishop, the Most Reverend Thomas J. Olmsted. There were several passionate and moving speeches from both women and men whose lives have been forever altered by abortions, as well as an adoption testimony, and the supportive presence of a good number of our Arizona legislators.

We saw many of our Ss. Simon and Jude clergy and staff there, including our wonderful Rector, the Very Reverend Fr. John Lankeit, and our Parochial Vicar, the Reverend Fr. Matt Henry, who both happily joined my crew for some pics. So thankful for the huge crowd that came out today to witness their support for Life, their respect for Women, and for the immeasurable value of each and every human life.

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