Year:
1975 Age: 15 years.
Doctor:
"Is there any chance you could be pregnant?"
Me:
"No." Liar.
I was
pregnant. Six months pregnant in fact. And still in deep denial.
But all that was
about to change. The terrible truth was about to hit not only me, but my whole family.
It's a sad thing
when a young girl thinks she needs sexual love to fill a void inside her heart that can
really only be touched by God's love. I'd believed another lie, it seems. The truth
was that Jesus could meet that need for love that is so fundamental to the human
condition. I didn't know that. I was searching for love in all the wrong
places. And it didn't stop there. The next ten years saw me go from one empty
relationship to another in a soul destroying attempt to find that illusive goal... true
love.
Getting pregnant
didn't serve to enhance my sense of being loved at all. Quite the opposite. There
was an attempt made to remove me from the public eye, and I was sent to live in a
Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers. I was soon transferred to my sister's
home because I hated it so much, but there I sank into an undiagnosed depression, sleeping
in every day until 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
Eventually I had
to return to the Salvation Army hospital which housed the unmarried mothers, to await the
arrival of the baby - a lonely and miserable month, as I remember. Not half as
lonely and miserable as the six hour labour, though! A poor excuse for a nurse was
left in charge of me while I agonised alone, after having my waters broken artificially to
make sure I had the baby before the doctor went away for a holiday. The nurse was
busy doing some bookwork and found my groans annoying it seems, so she told me to stop
being such a sook.
I didn't tell her
I was afraid, in pain, lonely... I just tried to stay quiet. I didn't tell God I was
afraid, in pain and lonely either, but He knew. He sent a nurse into my room who was
just going off duty, and because she'd never been present at a birth before, she asked to
be allowed to stay. She sat at my side and silently held my hand. I had never
felt so comforted in my life. That was God at work.
|
