What would you advise? What would you suggest? What would you do?
A young woman discovers she is pregnant.
She works an office job. She makes little money. She does not have a car … or her drivers license.
She still lives at home with her parents. A household where she has witnessed, and experienced, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
Her boyfriend, of a few years, asks whose baby it is. He is not planning to stick around!
She is pregnant.
What would you advise her? What would you suggest she do? What would you do, if you were that girl?
Really, what would you advise? What would you do?
The girl has options:
1. abort the pregnancy
2. go to term, and allow the baby to be adopted
3. keep the baby
What would you do? Seriously!
This is not a new, or uncommon situation. It is one that has directly affected the lives of many women, through all generations. It is not an easy situation. It is not a comfortable one.
Now, seriously, what would you advise? What would you do?
I will tell you what this young woman did …
She continued the pregnancy, and delivered a healthy baby girl. She kept the child. She, and her child, continued to live in her parents home until she met and married a man who proposed to her, and asked to adopt her child simultaneously. The child grew, and was joined by two brothers (who were royal pains in the … neck). She grew up, married, had three children, had friends, and hobbies, and a job she loves. She found her Creator through the faith and life of her grandmother. She has not had a flawless, perfect life, but she has had … life.
Today, forty-three years later, I celebrate my birthday. In real terms, I celebrate my meaningful life, because my mother made a tough decision, without any knowledge of how this decision was going to play out.
Even as I contemplate the circumstances through which she made her decision, and even though I am thankful for the life she chose to give me, I do not know that I would advise or counsel another woman to do the same. Her circumstances would make the decision to continue the pregnancy and to keep her child so … unwise.
Whether or not my mother acknowledged this at the time or not, we do not know the future, and we do not know the purpose in pain, or the value in struggle. Only our Creator knows why the DNA of two people came together to form a new being, a new life.
My life has not been flawless, or perfect. It has not been without pain, or struggle, or heartache. I have not lived a life without regrets, or sins. I have felt hurt, and pain, and not understood why bad things have happened in my life.
But, I have had … life.
And I have my mother and the strength that she possessed when she decided to continue her pregnancy to term, give birth to and raise me.
Thanks mom, for giving me a happy birthday.
Now, what would you have done?
“For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts,God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you. ”
Psalm 139:13-18
itsawonderfilledlife 