Joy out of Sorrow

Chapter 1

It felt like the longest two minutes of my life. I guess it was two minutes; it’s kind of a blur now. Waiting for the little, white-and-purple stick to tell me my fate was painful. I kind of already knew, strange as it sounds. I had been scared this would happen. I knew we weren’t careful. I won’t get into the messy details, but I wasn’t persistent enough about being careful. In those two short minutes, my mind went from fear to sadness to confusion. I was afraid for so many things. Afraid for it to be positive. Afraid for what it would mean. The anticipation was almost too much to handle. I knew in my gut what the little stick on the back of the toilet was going to say before I saw it. Two lines. Yep. Two pink lines.
I was pregnant.
What in the world was I going to do? I was seventeen and a senior in high school. I was going to graduate in about four weeks. I was in a relationship that I knew wasn’t good for me, yet I couldn’t get out of it. Those two pink lines sure seemed to complicate things so much. My perfect from the outside world had just been flipped upside down. I wasn’t sure where to turn. For a few weeks, no one knew except the father and me. I knew it couldn’t stay a secret forever, but I just wasn’t ready to face it, or my family.
I was born in 1980 in a small town in Louisiana called Alexandria. I was the second of two children, with a brother fifteen months older than me. My parents were both from large families with many siblings. My dad was the second of ten children and was brought up in a very religious home. Our home was very similar. We went to Mass every Sunday and prayed at night before bed. I knew God existed, but I did not have a one-on-one relationship with him.
Much was expected of me as a child. I was very bright and did well in school, which led to expectations of perfection. I’m honestly not sure if the expectations were greater from my father or from myself. I felt like the way to make my parents proud of me was to do well in school and stay out of trouble. I followed the rules and had good friends who stayed out of trouble as well. I always wanted to make everyone happy and make sure no one was ever angry with me. What others thought of me was always so important to me—too important. I think my parents just assumed that I would always do the right thing so there was never talk about what to do in certain situations that came about as I got older.
In high school, the temptations were greater to veer from the right path. Those temptations seemed so much more exciting and appealing than my straight and narrow path of being good. What could one drink at a party hurt? I would still be able to keep my grades up, and all my friends were doing it. So where was the harm? What I didn’t know was that those things would cause me to lose my inhibitions and send me down a path that would change my life forever.
When the friend of an old boyfriend started calling me, it was exciting. I felt like I was being pursued. No one had ever really done that before, and it was fun. We talked on the phone for weeks before going on an official date. I felt like I could talk to him about anything. When we finally did go on a date, we went bowling and then hung out at his house where no one was home. This should have been my first clue, but I was enjoying being in the moment so I didn’t mind. Things almost went too far that night, but I stopped him. I don’t think he said anything negative about it that night, but I remember feeling like I had let him down. I was so wrapped up in the moment and the rush of the relationship that I did not even think about what the right thing to do was. I wasn’t armed with anything. Like I said before, I think my parents always thought I would do the right thing so there was no discussion of situations like this. I liked the fact that someone was paying attention to me, so the relationship progressed to the point where we were staring at the stick on the back of the toilet. We had been dating for several months at this point, and it was nearing the end of my senior year of high school.
Our relationship was never perfect. It was up and down. I ignored the fact that he may have been seeing other people because I wanted him to like me so much. I was so insecure in being alone that I stayed in a relationship that wasn’t much of a relationship. I wasn’t happy but just couldn’t get out of it. My parents weren’t too fond of him; they could see he wasn’t good for me. I just ignored their words of warning.
The reality of having to tell my parents and family was terrifying. I knew telling them would be one of the hardest things to do, so I just didn’t. I was afraid of letting them down. I kept it secret from almost everyone. I think I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do with the information and how I was going to face it. And maybe if I didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be real. We told the father’s parents, who suggested I have an abortion. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to do that. I was shocked at how quickly that was suggested. My family was very Catholic and had instilled strong values in me about the importance of life. My grandmother had a bumper sticker on her car that said, “It’s a child, not a choice.” I loved that sticker. I knew that abortion was not something I would ever be willing to do.