I consider myself a good person. Being taught from a young age that we need to donate to charities showed me compassion, and I’ve continued to contribute to my local church regularly. I’ve always reached out to the sick, the lonely, the ones who are in need. My entire life I’ve been told that if I’m a good person, God will reward me. However, there was a time in my life when I found myself blaming God.
While I can understand that the definition of a “good person” can vary for each individual, I also believe that there are certain standards of human decency that we can all agree upon. So I was in complete shock when, being the good person that I am, I found myself alone and pregnant. I was more alone than I’ve ever been. The birth father left, my so-called “friends” were suddenly “busy,” and my family was angry. I can consider myself lucky that my family still supported me despite their anger, but I had let them down.
I didn’t understand it then, but when I learned of the pregnancy I began the stages of grief. It makes sense: my life would never be the same and I needed to grieve the loss of who I was, especially before I could discover the new woman I was about to become. It took 2 home pregnancy tests and a doctor confirming the pregnancy before I believed I was actually pregnant.
I quickly moved onto the next stage: blame. Who was at fault? The birth father and I had taken precautions to prevent pregnancy. We did our due diligence, so the odds of pregnancy occurring should have been unheard of. There were plenty of women doing exactly what I did and they didn’t get pregnant—so why did I? I blamed the only Being I could, in my mind, rationally blame: my Heavenly Father. He must have been punishing me for having premarital sex. He must have hated me and wanted me to suffer. He must not be watching over me like I was always told He would. My angry, young heart grew bitter. I couldn’t comprehend how my life had taken such a sour turn when I had worked so hard to be a good person.
This was a turning point in my life. I could either blame God for my unplanned pregnancy or I could blame myself—and I certainly didn’t want to blame myself. I got through blaming my Heavenly Father in a few different ways. The first was my support system. My family could have been a better support system for me if I had allowed them to be. I felt so much shame in my situation that I told my family and then pushed them away. As I mentioned before, the birth father and my friends were long gone. This left me completely alone. I turned to my adoption agency, local birth moms, and my church. In these places, I found more support than I could comprehend. All of them knew I was religious and all were telling me the same thing: pray.
Old habits die hard, but when I had felt alone as a child, I prayed. So as an adult, more lonely and afraid than I had ever been before, I prayed again. It wasn’t an “official” prayer, on my knees, my arms folded respectfully. It was as I lay in my bed after I had cried so many tears that they had stopped falling. My body was exhausted and I felt sicker than I had ever felt before. I was losing weight rapidly, and every day I begged the universe that I would miscarry just so this child wouldn’t have such a failure for a mother, but every day the pregnancy continued.
Finally, when I felt I had no other choice, I closed my eyes and whispered to my Heavenly Father. I told Him I was sorry, it wasn’t Him who abandoned me, it was me who had abandoned Him. I apologized for hating Him, I told Him that I missed His presence in my life and I yearned for His companionship once again. I don’t know if it was after minutes or hours, but eventually, I asked for help, for guidance, for knowledge about how to move forward with this situation. I loved this child growing inside of me and I was so afraid to love him. Eventually, I was able to fall asleep, not even properly closing the prayer.
My life didn’t get easier after that day, but I did feel less alone. There was a sense of peace as I moved forward and, even now, years after the birth of my son, I’m getting to see more of the picture. I do believe that every time I was with a person physically, I left a bit of myself with them, spiritually. I was losing myself, and after my pregnancy, I was much more particular about who I chose to share myself with.
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The adoption has fulfilled my life in ways I could have never imagined. My birth son is part of who I am and I’ll never regret his life. At times I think back on who I was and I feel ashamed of the actions that brought my birth son into this world, but the impact that he has made on me and those around him has been one that I would have never predicted. He was meant to be, he was meant to come into this world the way that he did, and he was meant to have the parents that he has.
I do accept responsibility for my actions, I know that I was the one who chose to have sex and that resulted in a pregnancy. I also believe that God played a role in my pregnancy, allowing it to happen despite the precautions that were taken. And now, seven years later, I still “blame” God for the part He played in my pregnancy, but I’m thankful for it.
Are you considering adoption and want to give your child the best life possible? Let us help you find an adoptive family that you love. Visit Adoption.org or call 1-800-ADOPT-98.
