Young, dumb, and in love…what else do I need to say? I grew up in a Christian family where there were family dinners, vacations, and Church on Sunday. As I grew older, I began to become extremely hard headed. I felt as if I needed to experience everything on my own and I wouldn’t listen to what anyone had to say. I became active in school and athletics and began to find success. I made the Varsity team my freshman year and ended up being in the top five that started the district games. I was young, but felt as if I had it all before me. I started becoming more and more active in the social aspects of high school…boys, parties. About the middle of my sophomore year, I started dating my best friend.

He was the athletic boy; I was the athletic girl. It was the story book couple of high school relationships. However, it was not based on God. I failed to share with him the truth of Christ that I knew in my heart.

After we had been dating for about 3 months, we had sex. I had never had sex before, had not really even come anywhere close. He had had sex many times before me, but for some reason I thought that with me it would be different, that we would last forever.

He cheated on me numerous times, all of which I continued to take him back. He didn’t know how to find acceptance, he did all the wrong things to make himself feel wanted and liked.

After I graduated from high school I left early to come to college. I registered for three hours second summer session of college and moved. I was excited, scared, and sad all at the same time. We stayed together through all this continuously breaking up and getting back together. Through it all we continued to have sex.

About half way through the summer session, I did not start my period. I was always real irregular and really did not think much of it at the time. We never used a condom, never worried about it. I always thought, “It will never happen to me.” Well, it did happen to me. After a while of worrying, I took a home pregnancy test and found out that I was pregnant.

I called him and told him that I was pregnant and he said that we would get married. I did not know what to do. A wave of emotions went through me. I thought that I loved this guy. I knew that it wasn’t going to be the life that I had always dreamed of, and I knew that if we did get married, everything would change. We decided that I would come home and we would tell my parents, but I got scared, nervous and confused. I knew that my parents would be upset and disappointed, but I never gave them the opportunity to react.

One day he mentioned to me the idea of having an abortion. I told him no, that it was against everything that I ever believed in and it was wrong. As time went by, I became more and more scared and confused, and I never turned the right way. I never prayed to God for guidance, I never talked to my family for support. I kept it all inside and did not search for other answers.
I scheduled an abortion on August 3rd . I called him and after some convincing, he was able to come and go with me. When we got there, I tried not to think about what I was about to do. I convinced myself that it wasn’t wrong, that everything would be ok. When they called my name I went in and had an ultra-sound. They turned the monitor so that I could not see my baby. I tried to look and immediately they stopped me. At that time, I began to wonder why they wouldn’t let me see the picture. I began to have tons of emotions going through me. God was giving me a way out. He was telling me that I didn’t have to go through with it, that I could walk out right then and begin the rest of my life. However, all this time, he was in the waiting room and I was in there on my own thinking that I couldn’t go back, that I had already made the decision and this was what was going to happen.

They gave me painkillers and I felt as if I was drunk. I was high on medicine and didn’t realize what was about to happen. Before I went into the office, they demonstrated to me what they were going to do, however, no demonstration could prepare me for the rest of my life. The operation itself lasted about 1 minute. The one minute that changed my life forever. The physical ramifications of the operation in no way compared to the emotional and mental consequences that were to come. They are consequences that you can’t prepare yourself for. Consequences that no one will tell you about and that no one can understand unless they have been through it themselves.

While I was lying there, there was a counselor holding my hand. Some lady that I did not know and would never see again. She told me that it was ok, and that what I was doing wasn’t wrong. She tried to rid me of my doubts. She started asking me where I was from and what my major was. She changed the subject and tried to make me think of other things besides what I was doing. That should have been a red flag to me. When someone won’t let you understand what you’re doing, it obviously means that it is wrong.

Once it was over, I was in a room with tons of other girls that had just done the same thing. Girls as young as 13, that had no problem with what they were doing there, some of whom had been there before. I looked around me and began to feel ashamed, to tell myself that I was better than those other girls in there and they weren’t from the type of family that I was from. I walked out of the room and got into the car and slept all the way home. He brought me upstairs and put me in bed and then immediately left. I was there by myself, once again, left to deal with the pain alone. The guy will always say, “we went through the same thing”, but its not the same thing, its completely different. He had to drive me there, and then he could leave. He could forget about what had happened, I would live with it for the rest of my life. The physical consequences remained for a couple of months, but that in no way prepared me for the mental pain that was yet to come.

I started my freshman year of college, trying to block out my past and everything I had done and gone through. I pretended as if nothing had happened, I blocked out my experience and thought that it would go away. In about March of my freshman year, I became extremely angry. I pushed all my friends away; I wouldn’t leave my room. I would have fits of anger where I would lash out and scream.

In June I went to a psychiatrist and after the first fifteen minutes of being there, she diagnosed me with depression. During our next session, I was diagnosed with bi-polar disease and manic depression. I was prescribed numerous medications and began to rely on them. In July I attempted suicide. I had just gotten in a fight with him and I “wanted to go to sleep.” I over dosed on sleeping pills and was taken to the hospital by my roommate and one of my good friends. The next morning I pretended as if nothing had happened. I told everyone to leave me alone, that I was fine and one day it would all go away.

In the fall of my sophomore year of college, I attempted suicide again. He was at my house and I began to feel that the guilt was never going to go away. My friend had given me a gun and I had it hid underneath my mattress. I didn’t tell anyone about it, it was my secret. So, after he left I took it out and began putting the bullets in it while I was sitting on my bed. He had forgotten his hat in my room, so he walked back in and found me sitting there. He grabbed the gun out of my hands and threw it in a bunch of trees that are behind my apartment. I just sat there and let him yell and scream. He immediately left and went home and I sat in my room and cried for hours. I was tired of the voices inside me, telling me that the pain would never go away. The next day I called him and all he could tell me was how much I had hurt him. Of course, all that did was enforce my feelings of guilt and pain, it definitely didn’t make them better.

A couple of months later, I decided that I was going to stop taking my medication. I just quit taking them one day, and I began to have withdrawals. As time went on, I was completely off the medication and I began to evaluate my relationship with Christ. That was what I had been missing. It wasn’t the medication, it wasn’t him, it wasn’t even my baby; it was Christ. I had pushed God out of my life, and that was the biggest mistake I had ever made. I studied God’s grace more and more and began to understand that he loved me and as it says in Ephesians 1:4 “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” Holy and blameless? I couldn’t understand that. I didn’t see how God could look at my life and me and say that I am pure and clean, a child of Christ. That is what is so amazing about God’s grace. Whenever He looks at us, He doesn’t see the human, he sees His Son. This concept is something that I continue to struggle with and must continuously remind myself.

Throughout the Bible, God demonstrates His grace over and over again. The woman at the well, Mary Magdalene, Paul’s love for people, Christ’s relationships with prostitutes and tax collectors. 1 John 1:8-10, demonstrates that all we have to do is ask Christ for forgiveness and He forgive us and forgets. Yes, He forgets. As humans we can’t grasp that topic. In Romans 3:9-20 Paul informs us that no one is righteous, not even one. That no one deserves the love of Christ, but we have it, and we are all equal in His eyes. Nothing can prepare you for the consequences of having an abortion. There is not a person in this world that can make that decision for you, but God can. He tells us in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, and who are called according to His purpose.” He is there for you, and He will be there for you for the rest of your life on earth and for eternity.
There is not a single consequence of having a child that even comes close to the consequences of having an abortion. Birth is of God, taking death into our own hands is not. You never know what decision you will make until you are put into that situation yourself. I was in that situation, and I made the wrong decision. It is only through God that I can “erase” that choice, and close that chapter of my life. There is never a day or a minute of the day that I do not think about what I did. There is not a time that I can look into the eyes of a child, and wonder if mine would have smiled at me like that. Having an abortion was the worst decision of my life. But God will find a way to be glorified through every decision. God is sovereign, but he is as sovereign as He chooses to be. He allowed me to choose, and I made a mistake. But He will never leave me (Hebrews 13:5, John 10:27-28), and faith in God and His grace, is the most important thing that has come out of that chapter of my life. Everyday we are faced with decisions, some more extreme than others are. Ask yourself one question, “Is this glorifying to God,” and the answer to that question should be the answer to your question.

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