I am sure that both of us had very different plans for the future. I imagined college degrees, followed by white picket fences and church ministry. He imagined working hard, getting married, having babies and a boat.
I wanted to teach in a Christian school. He wanted me to be a nurse. There wasn't any money in Christian education he countered, look at how my mom struggled. His mother, a single mother, teaching in a Christian school, trying to keep her children from being part of the majority of single parent homes. She pushed him to be the man of the house, wanting him to grow up faster than he needed to, rescuing him from any and every situation that could teach him natural consequences or hardship. She hadn't married his father and knew it was the best thing for him. A father on drugs and in and out of jail was not the man she envisioned to help her raise her son. But, she had given him his name. To remind him or to remind herself, I am not sure, but it always plagued him. To have a namesake of a man he wouldn't know until it was too late for him to have or need a father, too late for him to know how to be a father to his first son.
We were laying in the grass on the side of my house, looking at the stars. He quietly confided in me that he hated his father for leaving and never be a part of his life, how he'd seen him passing by his yard in his car as he stood in his backyard, knowing that he had a connection to the man in car, but not knowing how. How when he showed up at work with a little girl on his hip introducing her as his sister and he was his father, how he wanted to hit him. "I would never abandon my son. Never. I can promise you that", he had whispered.
We both made promises to ourselves and to each other. Many times those promises were not intertwined and would later unravel around the birth of our son.
When I finally made the verbal declaration that I could not, would not marry him, he left. He was hurt and heartbroken, his vision of our future shattered. His mother would respond with a letter, so fiercely defensive stating that he would not support me in my pregnancy, but be a father to our child once it was born. She made it clear where she stood, where he stood and where I would have to stand. On my own and with God on my side.
My family and my church became my strongholds. Their love and support for me was amazing. It was not easy to be a young unwed mother on campus or at church or even at family gatherings, but having their support made it bearable. I spent long hours in prayer and God's word, crying and pleading for direction and guidance and I know that God had allowed me to be on the path that I was, but I longed for him to be there, to care about me apart from our child. I knew I had caused him immeasurable hurt and that I couldn't reverse it. I just wanted someone to hold me and tell me that it was all going to be okay. And Someone did. God became by companion and held me through the sleepless nights.
My older sister came to live with us during my last trimester. We took college courses together and she literally pushed me through the semester, driving to on campus classes, recording the telecourses, taking notes, typing up my papers. She also became my defender against him hurting me or me dwelling on my pitiful thoughts of loneliness. She was my labor coach and my friend. She reminded me during the tough times that I was not alone and that I could and would get through this.
As soon as my classes were finished and my taxes were filed for the year, at 10 days overdue I went into labor. I had determined that I was going to have a natural birth to prove to myself that I could and to remind myself of the consequences of my sin. I felt like I deserved to feel all the pain and discomfort of labor as a reminder of the hardship that I had put everyone through over the last 10 months. I leaned into the Lord and allowed Him to bring me through the hard hours of labor and into the exhilarating process of motherhood.
On March 17, at 7:39 PM my son entered the world. Weighing in at 7 lbs 14 oz and 21 inches long he already bore the weight of the situation on his little shoulders. His birth set things in motion. In a way and at a speed that would again alter the lives of the people who conceived him and those that had grown to love him before he even entered the world. And his life would be affected the most.
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