What if it happened to you?

With all the talk of Sarah Palin's 17 year-old daughter being pregnant, there has been lots of discussion of teen pregnancy in the news. Several times this week I have heard the question, "What would you do if it happened to you?"

Honestly, I hope it doesn't happen to me. But if it does, I know exactly what I would do. I would treat my daughter the same way my parents treated me when I got pregnant at 17.

I would love her.

Of course they did millions of things more than that, but every action and every word was based on love.

Do I want my daughter to go through what I did? Absolutely not.

Do I explain to her why I don't want her to go through it? All the time.

Believe me, we are VERY open with her, and because we speak from experience we don't sugar-coat anything. I would like to believe that she will make all the right decisions, but I'm not naive enough to think that she can't mess up.

Though I pray we don't have to deal with those circumstances, I don't know where I would be right now if I had not been so loved at that time in my life.

People look at me and my husband now and think life must have always been good. We have a great marriage. We are very much in love and are in a great place in life. He has a wonderful job. I'm able to stay home with our kids and home school. We recently built a house.

But life wasn't always like this.

We were 17 and 18 when we got married. We both started college full-time right out of high school and he started working nights and weekends. When I became pregnant with our second child, I quit college and became a SAHM. Not long after that we had our third child and moved because my husband was accepted into PT school.

(Yes, we realized a pattern there and we eventually made a permanent decision that I would
later painfully regret.)

A lot of life happened between babies and school and jobs. Being married is hard work, no matter how old you are. And when you are aren't living for the Lord and you're exhausted from dealing with three small children all day or are working and reading textbooks for umpteen hours at a time, putting forth effort to sustain a good marriage isn't necessarily a priority.

But God is faithful.

And here we are.

Eighteen plus years later, sixteen of those being married, we still love each other very much. We have three amazing children that make me smile every day. We are very involved in our church and love to serve. And because of what I went through, I'm able to minister to young women all the time who just want a flicker of hope to hold onto, when they find themselves in a similar situation.

And when I'm able to give them that, I am so very thankful that I can.

Originally posted September 2008