Birthright

She was a Christian girl who had a wholehearted love for Jesus. I could see it in her. She had a unique look that was a different variety of beautiful. Maybe she wasn’t movie-star gorgeous, nor was she a chiselled, lipstick-thin model. She was beautiful in a different way, selected from a wide variety of faces that God could have given her. Hazel’s eyes were big and green and were lenses to her soul. Her eyes were what drew one to her face first. She wore glasses, and they seemed to make the rest of her face not really noteworthy. Her skin was pale but not sickly so. She was a petite girl of 5 feet 2 inches, but there was no mistaking that puberty had morphed her into the early stages of womanhood.

Hazel’s boyfriend was attracted to her uniqueness. His name was Orlando Lillard. He already had a full beard at 16. He was a year younger than Hazel. He worked out and was on the wrestling team. He too had a love for God and went to church and youth group.

It seemed as if Hazel and Orlando had always known each other. They were close and in love. He had said since he was 12 that he would marry her someday. She had agreed, and they almost acted like an old married couple. They were holding hands at 14. They shared their first kiss when they were 11.

Then Hazel and Orlando decided to go deeper into their relationship. Even though they knew that sex outside of marriage was wrong according to God’s Word, they thought they were going to get married anyway and were already committed to each other. They would only have sex with each other and nobody else.

Hazel bared this part of her life in my small office, which I tried to make a safe place for anyone who needed to talk. I could have debated her decision to have sex before marriage, because I’d lived it. I had lived immorally before I got married. I didn’t get down on her for that. She already knew that truth. She needed a little more grace—actually, a whole lot more grace. She told me she was pregnant. She needed help with this.

I was glad she came to me. When she said that maybe an abortion was the best option for her, something in me said to do what I could to save the little life in the balance. I prayed that death would not claim this unborn child.

Hazel voiced her fears that if people found out she was pregnant out of wedlock as a Christian girl, it would place a stigma on her and her family. She’d be a laughingstock, an embarrassment. She’d be another strike against Christianity to the unbelieving world, only confirming for them what they already believed—that Christianity was all a crock. She didn’t want that burden on her heart. If she somehow kept somebody from heaven and an eternity with God because of what she had done, claiming to be a Christian and living in sin, she couldn’t live with it. They’d see her as a fraud—a hypocritical Christian telling others they were living wrong, when she was living wrong herself. She started to cry, and I cried with her. I told her that it was all going to be all right. God was there. I could feel Him in the room, taking active interest in one of His children who was in trouble.

I fervently prayed as I talked with Hazel. I needed the right words to save this little gift that God was presently working on little by little.

I told Hazel that having the baby adopted was an option. There were countless childless couples who wanted a baby, no matter what the circumstances were. I said she should tell her parents as soon as possible. This was something she couldn’t hide forever. Hazel was afraid they’d throw the Bible at her and make her find every chapter and subsequent verse for her predicament, sexual immorality and its consequences. Hazel had a good relationship with her parents. They were loving and caring toward her and her siblings. She didn’t want to ruin it. She loved them and was afraid life wasn’t going to be the same. I gently pointed out that life was already changing and wouldn’t be the same again. Hazel had entered into the world of adulthood, where everything was more complicated, more bureaucratic and harder to get through, with red tape that tied you down. A person had to develop a thick skin. Thinking fast on your feet could leave your head dazed. Hazel admitted that she wasn’t ready to be an adult, even though she was doing some adult things. It hurt me to see her in anguish.

Orlando was a child himself. He didn’t have the maturity to enter the adult world, where he would have to be gainfully employed, be a husband and father, maintain the car and fix the toilet when needed. How would he feel about fathering a child at 16? How would his feelings change toward Hazel? These questions were dizzying cliff hangers in a drama I was sure they didn’t want to be a part of.

During the conversation, she brought up abortion three times as a solution. She thought nobody else needed to know. I had done some study on the devastating effects of abortion on both babies and their potential mothers. I had seen how the babies were aborted and how women and girls suffered damaging, life-altering revulsion and regret that never completely left. It was the stuff nightmares were made of. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be that baby and be methodically killed even as its little hummingbird heart was beating miles per minute.