A music video produced by a Saskatchewan-based musician, speaker and author is promising to offer a new way to get the pro-life message out while giving pro-life organizations a unique fundraising opportunity.
Lorraine Hartsook has produced Bring That Child to Me, a video filmed earlier this year in Tennessee, but based on a song she wrote about a decade ago and has been performing at her concerts ever since. The project was inspired not only by Hartsook’s pro-life views and her desire to minister to hurting women, but also by her personal life experiences with respect to an inability to bear children and the subsequent adoption of two youngsters.
“I was born with a deformity in the womb, which caused me to go through many surgeries (and was) why I kept losing babies (through miscarriages),” she told The Interim in a recent interview. “Following that, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, which is a benign growth. I had 10 long years of that.”
Hartsook got her start in music at 11. The art came naturally to her, for she had no lessons in voice or guitar and began performing in Saskatchewan, first in Catholic liturgical music and later at community dances and in taverns as well.
The sufferings that came later led her to a point where she felt abandoned and became angry with God. “I didn’t understand why I had to go through all this suffering. But I do now. I look at it now as a privilege … I came to know Christ in a very intimate relationship through my suffering.”
She has channeled those sentiments into her music ministry, which has become rooted in a desire to share in the mission and vision of Christ – to heal the broken-hearted, help the blind see and set captives free. The recent pro-life project is an outgrowth of the fact that she is “ready and free” in her soul: “My broken heart has been healed. The blindness has been removed from my eyes,” she says.
Hartsook has released several CDs over the years, including Golden Gospel, Be Real, I’m Ready to Go and her latest, Embrace the Cross, which includes the song Bring That Child to Me. She has received seven nominations and three awards from the Saskatchewan Country Music Association, the Canadian Gospel Music Association and the Country Gospel Music Association. Embrace The Cross was named as the best country gospel album by the SCMA in March of this year.
The concept of a music video for Bring That Child to Me was born at a women’s conference in Texas. The song “radiates such an anointing and such a healing,” says Hartsook. “Wherever I sang it, it would touch people in the core of their being.” One participant walked up and asked her whether she had considered adding visuals to the song. Hartsook replied that she had never contemplated such a thing. She was advised to, “Just pray about it.”
“I came home and the Holy Spirit would not let this go from my heart. My husband and I prayed about it and that was the beginning of the seed planted … I began doing research to find film producers and directors … God just provided so many miracles.”
It turned out that her audio music producer knew of video producers in Tennessee who were very pro-life and willing to take on the project. Hartsook flew down to that state in mid-February and spent three days filming on location. As this issue of The Interim went to press, commercial copies of the video were in production with a targeted release date of early July.
Hartsook has sent a number of pre-release copies of the video to pro-life organizations in Canada and the U.S. So far, “Everyone has contacted me to say, ‘We’ve got to get this out for people to see,’” she says. “I’m not sure in what direction we’re heading with it, except I was hoping that somewhere along the line, this could be used as a resource tool within crisis pregnancy and counselling centres … I believe God is going to open the doors for wherever this project is going to go.”
Hartsook says the finished product includes more than just the music video, but also a personal commentary by herself and her husband about the hardships and losses in their own lives, along with an account of “the beauty and glory of being blessed with two adopted children (Janine and Jeremy) and how it completed our lives.”
Already, the video appears to have saved a life. Hartsook recounts how a young woman who saw a pre-release version of the video approached the video producer and told him she had been pregnant, did not want to tell her parents and had scheduled an abortion. After viewing the video, however, she changed her mind and kept the baby.
“This is the very first fruit and it had not yet been totally finished. We felt this was God’s way of letting us know that this was truly a divine appointment, truly his work,” says Hartsook, who hopes those interested in the video will contact her through her website: www.lorrainehartsook.com, e-mail: lhartsook@sasktel.net or telephone: (306) 962-4538.
“It is all done in prayer,” she says. “We take one step at a time and try to let God lead us where we need to be led. We are looking for people to hold us up in prayer for this project and for this ministry.”