Before Becoming a Birthmother / First-mother
I want to take my story back so you can know me a little better.
I was born to a loving and kind mother, who stayed at home to raise me and my brothers and a hard working father who traveled and provided for his family. Things took a turn when I was a child when my father was laid off from his career and money now became an issue. However when I look back I am grateful for that change, and how God’s plan is not always what we expect or want at the time. So my mother had to get a job, so she did. Life changed from carefree to a bit uptight. Even through this time there was not much that we as kids missed out on – at least that we could tell. We were always in after school sports and city sports and church activities. We always had tennis shoes to wear and my parents took time to help us with homework. We went on small vacations as well, even if it was camping or going to Iowa to visit family, we loved it as kids.
In Jr. High I loved sports, I was on the swim team/ diving team, I played volleyball and basket ball, I ran track and field – long jump- and not only did I play basketball for school but played on the guys league Thursday nights at church and on the girls league on Monday nights with the church. I loved my friends and loved Jesus. I wanted all my friends to love Jesus as well, so I would often bring friends to church events and hangout times. I just loved being with people. In high school, things changed a little I was no longer a “Jesus freak” which I had been called in Jr. High (and liked it) but I still wanted my friends to love Jesus, but found another way of going about it. I found out that my actions speak much louder than my words and friends would ask why I don’t “swear” and that would give me the opportunity to tell them about the God that I loved, or they would ask why I didn’t do so many of the things that many high schoolers do. I found that loving people and accepting them for who they are is important. After graduation I went to Paraguay to teach the people about AIDS, how to brush their teeth and give them tooth brushes, to give immunizations and to share God’s love with not only the people that lived there but with “my partners” that were not Christians. This experience was wonderful while at the time it was very hard to be surrounded by no one that was In Love with Jesus. It seemed that I was the only one in the town that I was in that really had a personal relationship with Jesus. Much of the religion was simply tradition, nothing we based on a personal relationship with Jesus, so as I struggled with the language to talk to my new friends about Jesus, I hope a few of them heard the words that God wanted them to hear. I don’t know if I will ever know in this life if my dear Paraguayan friends met and know the Lord. Paraguay was a wonderful experience in my life and God used that time to mold me and grow me. I learned that we are all so precious to Him, that we can live on so much less than we have here in the USA, people and relationships are so much more important than a time schedule. (this is the motto of Paraguay – to show up when you can, because it is important to finish your conversation with the person you are with before moving on—so sometimes when we had a scheduled activity countrymen would arrive up to three hours late.)
After returning from Paraguay most of my friends went off to four year Colleges while I went to the community college because I had no idea what I wanted to do, nor did I even want to be in college, but went to make my mom happy. At this time I also began to work with the Jr. High girls at the church. I started with the sixth grade girls. In December I started a job with a Bank near my home in Robbinsdale, MN. I continued to live with my parents being that all my money was going to fun things with the youth group girls, and traveling a lot. I grew to love the girls more than I would ever have expected, I continued to work with them for the next few years, and there was nothing I would have rather done than to be with “my girls.” Almost every weekend we would do something fun, have a sleepover, go out together, anything as long as it was together. These girls were my life. All my spare time and money was invested in these wonderful girls. When I was 20 I had met a guy and started a friendship with him, he would come to the church to play basketball, and I would end up giving him and some of his friends a ride home after since I lived the closest. I dropped him off last since he lived the closest to me, so I asked him one day if we could pray and what could I pray for him about. So we did this every time I dropped him off. I wanted him to know and love Jesus as I did. Then a Wednesday morning before school prayer time started up at the church and he and his friends wanted to go, and who am I to say no to these guys growing in God, so three to four of the guys would spend the night in my basement so that they could go with me in the morning to this prayer. It was one of these nights when I went out into family room where they were suppose to be sleeping to tell them to be quite. I stayed out there so that they would be quiet, when HE kissed me as I was nearly asleep, I should have punched him in the face, instead I kissed him back and this is where our relationship changed from good friends to something more.
He and I continued to pray when I would drop him off after basketball at church, but then we began to kiss for hours on end. I was no longer in college because I did not know what I was there for, I was now working full time at the bank, however I transferred to another location. After this we became closer and closer friends plus whatever more it was. Six months later is when we made the decision as friends that really love each other – only friends – that we would give the greatest gift to each other, that is what I was taught in the high school youth group. I did think it through, I thought I don’t believe that I will ever marry, and as I was taught in the youth group again, that premarital sex would really effect my future marriage in a terrible way, I did not have to worry about it because I do not believe that I will marry. If that makes any sense at all. I wanted him to know that I loved him and so this is a way I could do that. We were clearly not in love with each other but I loved him. So my story moves on, nearly a year later I look into his face and tell him we are going to have a child. The story continues in my previous blog entry.
The point of this story is that I truly loved Jesus, I loved my friends and wanted to live for God, when this slipped in. Something I would never have done, “my girls” would have vouched for me that I would never have had premarital sex, or even marital sex. So how did this happen? When I was living for God, my relationship was closer than it had even been in my life, when he kissed me. I was painfully devastated at the sin of disobeying God, and was unable to except his grace or reconcile this for the next almost 7 years. My conclusion to why this happened is that I was living for God and making moves for him, teaching “my girls” how to love him and others as he commands, and temptation slipped in, I was warned by my dear friend to turn, to run from it, but I thought I was strong enough to move through it. When the reality is I was not.
After telling my family I had to tell “my girl” so I wrote a letter to their parents so they would know first and be able to help there kids through it, I then sent a letter to the girls because I would not have been able to stop crying long enough to get the words out. First I told them I could not teach their Sunday school class, or anything else with them because I was living as a hypocrite in saying one thing and doing another, even though everything I was saying I believed in, but was not living in that way, and how could I lead them when my life is not what I wanted for their lives. The most surprising thing happened, they loved me anyway, more than anyone else in the church, and they continued to love me even though I thought they should not, that I did not deserve it. My family was devastated. I continue to crave God through this but I continue to live out of his will with the father of my soon to be child. I found that it is impossible to grow in God, no matter how much you want it, while you are living daily in sin, disobeying his word and his commands.
After birthing this child I placed him in the arms of his new parents just three days later and just three weeks later I was driving to Arizona with my mom to attend a college there, half way there in Missouri I called them to find out if my financial aid went through. I had to leave Minnesota; I had to run from the temptation, I could no longer live without God. I went to a Conservative Christian College in Phoenix. Where I lived in a bubble for that first spring semester, where I learned about the Bible grew immensely in God and prayed daily that either when I returned in the summer to Minnesota that I would have no feelings for my son’s father or that we would be madly in love and get married, but that we would not fall back into “sin”. During this time I prayed almost daily for my little child and his new parents. My point is that there was no time during all of this that I was not craving more of the Lord, that I was craving to be in his loving and grace filled arms. I have been told that I was never a Christian in the first place or this would not have happened, I can not believe that. Why would I have lived as I did with a passion for my friends to love Jesus? I was clearly a Christian since I gave my heart to Jesus in third grade – when I realized I needed Him and repented from my sins to try to live my life to serve others and serve Jesus. I tell you who said I was not a Christian in the first place; that Christians are not perfect, they still sin, and though they sin there is still Grace and Mercy from the Father that removes it all. Also, I would not have had a passion for others to love Jesus if I did not have a personal relationship with him myself. I guess my point is that I was not drunk, high or otherwise coerced into having sex before marriage, but it was a choice that I made. I was deeply in love with God when this happened, I was and am a Christian that has made a bad decision – ok a bunch of bad choices, but through it all God has been with me, loved me and poured out His Grace upon me. It is not of God that I should live in shame, so I tell my story that others may find His love, his Grace and Mercy and a relationship with God is worth all you have. You are his child that he loves, that he loves unconditionally, and wants you to know him personally. I have found peace with the adoption part of my story and I know that is because my pain has been covered by the peace promised by God. Let me say that there is pain, and there are results to sin, however the pain is covered as I said by peace about the adoption decisions that I made. Blessings to all that stopped here and have taken time to read my long story/ blog entry. I pray that you will find the peace and Love of God for your life.
~Joy
