THIS WAS THE FIGHT THAT ENDED EVERYTHING. I was standing between the couch and the coffee table, and he was in the middle of the small family room. Even our positioning demonstrated that he was the one who was powerful. We were yelling, though I can’t remember now about what, and he was leaving. Maybe I hoped that if I kept on fighting, he would stay. I was fighting with him, but in my heart I was fighting for something that was precious to me…I was fighting for family.
The phone whizzed past my face and crashed into the wall behind me. I stood, feet rooted to the floor, in disbelief and shame. But the overwhelming emotion I had was fear. I could feel it creep up from where I stood, wrapping me so tight it was hard to breathe, and still I kept fighting. I lost the battle that night, and I watched him walk out the door. I ran to the door and locked it, hoping to keep him away and wishing he would return. I turned back towards my family room and stared at the wreckage of my life.
I placed my hand on my stomach as I sank into the couch. I was 16 weeks pregnant with this man’s child. I really was fighting for family, even though I was doing it all wrong. I had this baby, and I had a beautiful daughter who deserved to have a family that was whole. I believed through all of the abuse that this was the way to put back the pieces of brokenness.
I began to bleed that night. I wanted to believe that it was going to be ok, but I knew my baby was dying. I called him. I was alone and afraid, and I wanted him to care. He told me to go to the hospital and he hung up on me. He never asked me about our baby again.
I will never forget the sound of the silence in the hospital. The nurse rolled an instrument across my stomach to listen for the heartbeat. I held my breath and I strained to hear something other than the steady whirring of the machine. I never did. I turned my head to the side, and, as I laid there, I quietly cried over the death of my child.
The next day I had to return to the hospital for a procedure called a D&C, which sounds as cold and as clinical as it is. In reality though, it is the thing that is used to take the life that once lived inside of you away. It is final. It is over. There is no more miracle to pray for. I woke up and was so overcome by the emptiness inside of me I could do nothing but cry in deep, guttural sounds of anguish. The quiet tears of yesterday were gone, and were replaced with a loss so great I was choking on it.
I WAS LOST. I tried to put one foot in front of the other and move on. I had a life to live and a daughter to love. The emptiness in my heart was a hole I didn’t know how to fill. I was empty of hopes and dreams of a family, and I felt like a failure. I didn’t turn to God, and I began to shut out the people in my life who loved me. This loss broke me in two, and I slowly stopped caring if I ever felt whole again.
The day after my baby was supposed to be born, I walked into a strip club for the first time. I lost so much more after that; the greatest loss of all being my daughter who deserved a better life than the one I was living. There was no more family left to fight for, and in the darkness of my life I was lost. I stopped believing that I was worth finding.
For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6
NOW I AM FOUND. It is especially sweet to me, a woman who has lost a child, that my Savior came into this world as a baby. Through this baby who became a man who would be slaughtered on a cross for my sins, I am found and I am free. I tried so hard to make other people in my life believe that I was worthy, and I endured abuse and sacrificed so much of myself in the process. You know what? That man never saw me as worthy. That is ok. You know why? BECAUSE JESUS DOES.
Jesus sees you right where you are and he loves you. Period. You don’t have to prove yourself as worthy, because he decided that you were worth dying for. Maybe you feel so lost that you can’t find your way back. I understand, because I felt that way, too. Honestly, I believed that even if I could find my way back, I had done too much in the dark that I wouldn’t be welcome in the light. Those are all lies. You may be a child who is lost, but remember that you are a child of God. In Jesus, there is ALWAYS a way back.
For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
Sex, Lies, and Jesus 