I was 23 when I found out I was pregnant. I was on drugs. I was sick, my stomach was giving out; I didn’t know what was going on till I knew the little one was in there.
It was scary. When they told me at the hospital I was pregnant, I was like, “No, I’m not, you gotta take that test over again.” I went into the waiting room and was like, This cannot be happening.
It took me back to when I was first pregnant. I had no backbone, nowhere to go. As a 15 year-old, I thought: My daddy’s sure gonna kill the father, and if they don’t kill me they sure may slap me and injure the baby.
A lot of men prey on girls in a desperate predicament, who become sexually active when they’re young; the girl doesn’t understand she can become pregnant. It might be pleasure—but pregnancy comes with pleasure. There are no p’s and q’s, just p’s.
Two months later, I had a miscarriage.
Now, four months in, getting an abortion was my first thought. There are definitely clinics here in Dallas that do it. I looked it up. But I thought maybe it wouldn’t carry to full term.
By the fifth month, I was thinking, Should I have this baby? I was married, but my husband was not the father. I didn’t have anything for the baby: no life, no home, no job. It was terrifying for me. I thought the baby was God’s wrath on me, to get me to stop doing what I was doing.
Another ministry in Dallas was helping me at the time. They said, Stay with us. We believe God has a word for you. Even though I wanted to leave, I didn’t. And I would have used drugs to induce abortion if they did not intervene.
The idea of having a baby started to grow on me. At six months, I named him Jaden. Yet I still didn’t want him. I still saw abortion as a possible choice.
Then I looked at the procedure online, which was horrifying. Seeing the reality of it made me not want to do it. Seeing how first they kill the baby, then snap it and take it out: clearly it’s taking a life.
I cringed to think of doing that to my child. When I looked at that, I spoke to him and said, “I could not do that to you.”
The change happened when I started to talk to him. In the seventh month I said, “I love you,” and called him by name. As I started praying and talking to him, I realized: This is a life.
God was leading me on this journey. I had to fall in love with Jesus before I could love anybody else. If I can’t love Him, then how can I love another being? How can I love my husband—no matter the wrong he did, the cheating, everything else—how can I love him if I don’t love Jesus?
Slowly my heart and my mind began to change. He showed me how to pray for people who had hurt me. That’s the hardest thing: to pray good things for them, and believe that justice will arise.
By the eighth month, my prayer was: whatever you want to do, God. I was singing over my baby. I had looked into adoption agencies, and the people I was staying with, they wanted a child. I was thinking, Maybe this would be good.
By the ninth month, I was ready for the baby to be in my arms—but six weeks later this little dude still hadn’t come! He was due March 1 … then March 15 … then March 28.
During my tenth month, I was having stomach pains and went to see my doctor. He said, “We are going to induce you.” By the time they were ready to induce me, my water had broke—he was already coming.
So he came out and he broke my tailbone. Lord, I knew he was going to be trouble!
At that point in time, I was responsible for his life. I couldn’t find it in my heart to let anyone else have him. I didn’t put him up for adoption. I kept him, and the couple I stayed with became his godparents.
But I did have complications in bonding with him and being with him. Another man tried to take him away. Now, after all this time we’ve been together, I yearn for my son. I have taken on this responsibility.
God taught me how to love another being, how to be courageous. He taught me how to love myself and love others as though I loved Him. He’s loved me through my addiction, adultery, fornication—all of that, and He still loves me.
Reminding me of how I first felt the baby was some sign of wrath, the Holy Spirit led me to Isaiah 54:8, where God says: “With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; but with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you.”
I love my son. He just turned 2. He’s awesome; he’s a beast.
The author is an anonymous client of Restored Hope Ministries, a faith-based nonprofit organization in Dallas, Texas dedicated to helping hurting women and children who have been abused and sexually exploited. Reprinted with permission from Bound4LIFE.
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