Marching Every Day
This is our fourth post in a series of March for Life Reflections from students across Illinois.The next reflection comes from Randy, the newly elected President of Illini Collegians for Life who traveled with SFLI to Washington, D.C. for the national March for Life. Here’s his story:I transferred to the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign in the fall of 2015. As I walked through the many tables and booths at Quad Day, the Illini Collegians for Life table caught my eye. The pro-life movement was something I had always been involved in and I was happy to see that there were others like me on this huge campus!School quickly took over my life and as the fall semester was coming to an end, I realized that I had only attended one ICFL meeting the entire semester. I was angry with myself for letting the business and craziness of the semester take precedence over something that had always been so important to me. Therefore, I began searching for something to reignite my conviction for the pro-life cause. I had attended the March for Life in D.C. many times before, but it had never even occurred to me to make an effort to go in college. I thought for sure that I would be too busy with school and extracurricular activities to be able to take two whole days off school. However, when a couple of my friends urged me to go, I reevaluated and told myself that marching for the innocent lives of the unborn should never take a back seat to my GPA.When we arrived in D.C., I attended the SFLI Summit where I heard from pro-life activists and networked with my pro-life peers. When we shared our stories with each other about why we were pro-life, I was nearly drawn to tears by the conviction and confidence my peers had about such a controversial issue. The next morning, we loaded up on the bus and I was pumped and ready to go outside in the cold to be a testament to the world for the innocent lives of the unborn. When I found out that we were not going to be able to attend the March for Life in D.C. due to the massive blizzard headed our way, I was devastated.I thought that the trip was a complete failure. I heard SFLI was trying to plan something small in Dayton, Ohio, but it did not cheer me up. My mind had been so set on attending the March for Life in D.C. that my vision had been clouded and I could not see the true power of what was about to happen. When we arrived in Dayton, we stepped out of the bus and I started to lead a few pro-life cheers to help raise everyone’s spirits. However, in the back of my mind, I was still thinking that I’d rather be at the March in Washington. Then, as Anne from IIT was giving her testimony, she said something that gave me goosebumps. She said, “The blizzard did not stop us from marching, it simply spread us out.” As she said this, it finally hit me! The blizzard had not been a curse, rather it had been a gift from God so that the pro-life message would be spread to every corner of the nation. I realized that the March for Life is not something that should happen just once a year. We should be marching every single day for the innocent lives of the unborn.Life is truly precious and the March in Dayton showed me that the fight for life needs to be a daily battle, not an annual one.Thank you, Randy! At the Summit, SFLI dared all students to move, to not sit still. We're proud to see Randy turning that call into action.