Life Centers adds compassion to Westfield
By Lindsay Eckert
A Westfield nonprofit organization is helping women face crisis with compassion. Life Centers has a full-faceted approach to helping women who ask for help. They provide donated items, free pregnancy tests and help women take the first steps to prepare for the unexpected. The volunteers and directors are also on hand to listen and be a non-judgmental ear to women who have had an abortion.
Cindy Randolph, director of Westfield Life Centers, said the organization’s program, G.R.A.C.E Post-Abortion Recovery, provides healing to women who have had an abortion.
“Whether the abortion was recent or in the past at some point there will be emotions about it,” Randolph said. “The program gives women true healing.”
Life Centers’ Westfield location, 140 S. Cherry St., is not only a comfortable and private home of counseling. It is a clothing store and the home of a growing partnership with Center of Women’s Ministries and their programs.
Randolph said Dana Rankin, director for Center of Women’s Ministries, is the heart that opened the door to the partnership when Rankin contacted Life Centers about a year ago. Rankin said both organizations provide the compassion women need in time of crisis through bible studies and counseling with open hearts.
“We’re not here to judge, we’re not here to say, ‘poor you,’” Rankin said. “We’ve been where you are and that speaks volumes for people, it’s a powerful tool here.”
Randolph said listening to women in crisis gives her the chance to share her journey. She said her own experience allows women to talk with someone who truly understands their situations and feelings.
“I was adopted, I had an abortion and I’ve had the healing of Christ. I can speak knowing I’ve sat in the seats these women are sitting in,” Randolph said. “I sometimes pinch myself to have the opportunity to be here and serve my whole life in counseling.
You can contact Life Centers’ client line at 896-1425. Life Centers is open Mondays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information visit, http://www.lifecenters.com/index.html
Life Centers closed its Westfield location in 2008 and opened its new location to the community earlier this year. Although this is the only Life Centers in Hamilton County, Life Centers director and president, Brian Boone, said the new location is ideal.
“It’s strategically located in Hamilton County, an area with a growing population and close to younger people, it’s a foundation to provide the free services people need,” Boone said.
Randolph said Life Centers’ and Center for Women’s Ministries’ partnership, volunteers and the women in need work together to help one another.
“We are all the same heart,” Randolph said.