This piece isn’t starting out the way that I planned.

In fact, it’s about 500 words from what I had planned. But, sometimes life (or in this case, a computer with an attitude problem) doesn’t go as planned.

I finally finished my 9-5 for today, finished fixing and serving dinner, and once my husband (who is, bless him, currently washing the dishes) and I finished bathing the kids and getting them off to sleep—I came back to my computer only to find it all gone.

It’s a writer’s worst case scenario: carefully chosen words just … gone.

It’s certainly not the first time, nor will it be the last; but this time it felt different. You see, as the responsibilities of life begin to morph into a monstrous pile of to-dos and obligations (my fellow millennials call it “adulting”), taking time for extra things beyond my regular job and parenting duties, like writing a piece every week for my friend and mentor Chris Salcedo’s radio show, become increasingly difficult. And as Murphy’s Law would have it, it seems that nearly every week for the past umpteenth months, something always seems to get in the way of when I’m trying to take time to write. Maybe it’s an unexpected long day at the office, a sick child, a bad virus, a friend or family member in need—you name it and it has sat squarely in the path of completing my article, just like a cat seems to always sit precisely on what you’re trying to do.

And when it happens over and over and over again, you being questioning. “Am I forcing this? Am I fighting to keep doing something that God is closing the door on?”

(Thank you for indulging my sentimentality; I do have a point that I’ll get to soon!)

So naturally, when all of my hard work was gone, all of those mounting feelings join in with the sheer frustration of staring at a blank document—and I came seriously close to quitting tonight.

My husband, always the exceptional listener and superb encourager-in-chief, cheered me on. He made me turn around and at least finish today. “Don’t decide anything tonight,” he said, “Just finish this one.”

So I did. And right before I began to try and retype what had been lost, I happened to pick up my phone to look at Facebook.

First up on the feed was a post from a dear friend. She just watched her friend lose his battle with a horrible disease; she had just returned from helping his wife and children bury him, mourn, and begin to heal.

She wrote, “If God gives you a gift, don’t save it, share it. Use your gifts to serve God, by serving others. If you have the ability to help others, do so. Life is a gift that is meant to be shared.”

That was the first thing I saw, and I don’t believe it was an accident.

I don’t have a Pulitzer. But I know how to write. God blesses each of us with unique gifts, and in the humblest sense possible, I submit to you that mine is writing.

I may not be the best, but I can put pen to paper and help shed light on things that are quickly becoming overshadowed by a society that is hell-bent on silencing freedom in the name of the collective; hell-bent on prejudice in the name of political correctness; hell-bent on snuffing out tiny lives in the name of feminism.

Speaking of which…

Today I planned to use my piece to defend those who can’t defend themselves. Today, on the day I seriously considered calling it quits.

Boy, the devil would have loved that. So get behind me, son—here we go.

As most parents of young children can attest, going to the actual theater to see a movie becomes a distant memory—somewhere along with sleeping in on Saturdays or perfectly manicured nails. Needless to say, while I’ve had the opportunity to hear long-form interviews with former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson and her brave film “Unplanned,” I haven’t been able to see it myself—and that’s a shame, because this movie “outperformed the mega-budget woke-feminist superhero romp “Captain Marvel” on a per-screen basis,” battled (and beat) Twitter which “accidentally” deleted the film’s social media account, and “quickly gained more followers than Abby Johnson’s old employer, Planned Parenthood.”

And this film is actually changing hearts.

“Every day I’m waking up to stories of people who are like, ‘Your film changed my mind … I can’t believe I ever supported abortion,’” said Johnson, whose non-profit And Then There Were None has helped literally hundreds of former abortion workers get out of the abortion industry.

It’s easy to justify the act of “ending” a pregnancy when all you’ve been over and over again that that it’s not a life. It’s easy to just banish unsavory thoughts of death to the dusty corners of your mind if you’ve never seen it.

Let me pivot momentarily. There’s a Netflix documentary out now called “Our Planet,” and people have thoughts—particularly when it came to watching animals die:

So here’s my point: It’s hard to watch suffering. These people are having the reactions that you see here because they SAW it. It’s hard, if not impossible, to ignore the suffering of a living being once you’ve SEEN it.

I guarantee that if asked, not a one of these people knew about or much cared about natural animal deaths prior to this documentary.

They saw it, and they can’t unsee it.

That’s exactly what happened to Abby Johnson when she saw that ultrasound guided abortion and watched that unborn child fight like hell to get away from the instruments—finally succumbing to the inevitable. It was impossible for her to live with her justifications after seeing what she saw.

And I submit to you that that’s exactly what happened to this college student, when she “stood in front of a microphone [at an event featuring Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins] and said a baby born alive during a botched abortion should not receive medical care,” after Hawkins asked if the “U.S. should pay for the heath care of baby who’s dying in her mother’s arms when the mom crosses the border.”

The student said yes.

Hawkins pressed again, forcing the student to provide a rationale.

“Because they’re performing an abortion, so … they’ve already determined that it’s not a baby,” she said.

It’s then that student’s voice breaks a little, and the camera shows another student coming up from behind and hugging her as she speaks. There’s clearly emotion.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this girl or someone close to her had had an abortion—and maybe that day, in that room, at that moment, she’s realizing that her argument is not only flawed, but that she or whoever she’s thinking of has actually killed a living, breathing child.

I don’t know her story, and I could be wrong. But having Kristan Hawkins stand at the front of the room and hold up a life-size model of a child in utero and explain how the abortionist injects the baby with a heart-stopping toxin but that sometimes it misses the heart … is not something you can unsee. And I think that girl just realized that.

Seeing a child fight the instruments as they go in for the kill is not something you can unsee.

Keep speaking. Keep writing. Keep teaching.

The truth changes hearts. Don’t forget that.

Mary Ramirez is a full-time writer, creator of www.afuturefree.com, and contributor to The Chris Salcedo Show on KSEV 700 Radio in Houston. She can be reached at: afuturefree@aol.com; or on Twitter: @AFutureFree