Losing Control

     I was 21 years old and on my own. I was "playing house" with my boyfriend of a year. I had just gotten home from splurging at the grocery store. While there I had picked up a pregnancy test, I had a gut feeling. I followed the instructions on the packet. When I looked at the results I felt sick to my stomach. So many emotions! Fear, regret, anger. My life was going great and now God was going to throw this curve ball?! I didn't want kids and certainly didn't want them under the current circumstances. What would my parents think? I was the oldest, the one all my siblings looked up to. I had already been kicked out of the house so this was going to make me look even worse. My parents would kill me... No they wouldn't because I was going to take back control of this situation. Immediately I called and scheduled an appointment. I put the groceries away, I ate some strawberries and called my boyfriend to tell him the news. Without telling me he comes over, he wants to talk about options! Options!!! I'm in control and I'm doing this my way. Reluctantly he doesn't argue. The next day I go to the facility. Oh, the devil made it so easy! No protesters, but I'm still scared of the pain the procedure may cause me. They do the ultrasound, I barely glimpse at it, but I remember, to this day I remember that little ball of light. Almost like the sun shinning in a mess of blackness. But that devil, he is good. They tell me I am barely three weeks if that, no heart beat, not attached. To stay in control will require a pill!!! No painful suction, no prolonged wait, easy as pie. I accept, no questions asked. I remember thinking it was weird that the doctor watched while I took the pill, like I wouldn't! I go home and have to insert some pills to fully flush things out. Painful cramping begins but no big deal. I am in control and life can go back to normal, no regrets, just the knowledge I did something wrong. 
     Fast forward almost 8 years. My boyfriend, now my husband of two years, and I decide we want kids. Well he does and I think I do. Funny how God likes to work. The day my daughter was born was euphoric. Blissful labor, oh and I get to watch the Gator's win while giving birth. The doctor places Briseis on my stomach and that little baby looks dead into my eyes. I feel my heart break into millions of pieces. I was so wrong, I did want kids, just when it was convenient for me. She is my world but a new emotion is sinking in, guilt. Something is trying to resurface, but hey I am in control. I find out my husband cheated on me and we seek out God with a new found passion, determined to salvage the marriage. It works.
     Briseis is a year, my husband and I are healing and we decide to have another child. I get pregnant with no problems. I am three weeks along. We are helping my parents move from Houston back to Florida. I go to the bathroom, an ever so small blood clot. Fear creeps in, fear not of the unknowing but of the knowing. I'm going to lose this baby. My family tries to comfort me, tells me God knows what He is doing, that something was wrong with the baby. I agree with them, but a new emotion starts sinking in, regret for a sin made long ago. I had no control, I lose my baby. 
I love my life, I love my God, I love my husband and I love my three children God blessed me with despite what I did. I have asked God to forgive me for taking control of my child's life all those years ago. I have asked the child and family members for the same. I have forgiven myself, but that will never make the regret go away. Regret is the scar tissue that covers old wounds that we cause. It keeps us growing. It hurts, it will never stop hurting. What I did wasn't as bad as not trusting God enough to be in control. I wanted control of a situation I put myself into because I didn't like the outcome I was getting. I know my miscarriage was God's way of showing me, even when I think I'm in control, I'm not. There was nothing I could do to save the baby I miscarried. It has taken me years and years of emotions adding onto other emotions to realize the extent of what I did. 
     When you take another being's life, it is said you lose a part of your soul. Of that I have no doubt. I took something that wasn't mine to take. I doubted the plan God had for me. I doubted He was really in control of what was going on. Because of my blindness to the fact God was trying to spare me I will forever more have this scar of regret. It is a wound I want no other woman to bear because the scar will never go away, the guilt will remain and it will hurt. God's gift to woman of being able to bear children is a way to lose control and let God take control. Whether from rape, or an abnormality, or an accident. God makes no mistakes, He's in control, all He asks is that we lose control. 
 

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This excerpt was my first, it was also the hardest and most emotional one I have written. This was also the first step I took on this path.
          I will never forget that time in my life. From the moment my stomach hit the floor until the relief came from the “burden” being taken care of. But why? Why did I do something so bad when I knew how wrong it was? There is a great word to sum it all up…FEAR.
          The devil crippled me with fear as soon as I saw those double lines on the test. Fear of not wanting children period because I had taken care of and babysat my siblings and they were not all angels all the time. Fear because I was the oldest and the example I was setting was so lowly. Fear because my parents and I had helped my best friend in highschool tell her parents she was pregnant. Fear of the thought of the changes my body would go through and the pain if child birth. Fear of going through all that work to just give the baby away. Fear of what people would think when they saw I was not married. Fear my parents would hate my boyfriend forever and never let me see him again. Fear they would control me by helping me through the pregnancy only to hold it over my head in the future. Fear in every single aspect.
          The devil really new how to twist me into his image that day. It was one of the easiest things I have ever done. Swallow a pill, so simple, and then that ball of light on the ultrasound screen would go out forever. I had no idea of the consequences of my actions or the revalations I would have down the road. I just wanted my life back. I remember when I was pregnant with Briseis and she didn’t come on the date I wanted her to (seriously I was that naïve). I remember telling my parents that I felt like she was a parasite that wouldn’t get out of my body. Shame on me!!! I had murdered my first child and yet God showed me grace by giving me another chance. Yet here I was complaining and ungrateful because she came 4 days later then I wanted and ONE DAY past her due date! Selfish. Yet at the time I did not yet realize the weight of my sin.
          There are no words to describe the feeling I had when the midwife laid Briseis on my stomach. But back up even further. The labor experience. I went into labor on New Years, that night I went to the hospital. Get this, the on call doctor didn’t believe I was in labor!!! So he admitted me and gave me something to help me sleep. And was it good!!! I was “high” on the drug and sleeping well and full of relaxation and peace any time I would wake with a contraction. And then… pop (even Lance heard it on the monitoring system), my water broke. I was euphoric from there on out. I went through my epideral watching the Gator game (which they won) with the anesthesiologist being a fan as well. I lost track of time from there until my midwife came in to check me. The nurse and I quote, “She’s not ready. We just checked.” To which my midwife answered, “I bet she is.” She was right, Briseis was crowning! A couple pushes (2 is all I remember) and she was out. And  that feeling, there is no way to describe it. The closest I have ever been able to come is when the Grinch’s heart “grew three sizes that day.” And then terror… she was grey! Yeah, no one, not even my mother told me babies come out that way! So you future first time moms, you’re welcome. They assured me she was fine and just like that my sweet Peanut looked up at me with those huge eyes and coed at me. Now did I mention not wanting kids? Did I further mention NOT wanting a girl and if we did have one I had wanted the boys first. Well it’s a really good thing God knows better. But I’ll save that for later on in the book.
          It wasn’t until that point that guilt started to nag at me over the child I had murdered. My angel baby that forgave me just as God did the second I asked for it. But it would take much longer for me to forgive myself. God knows our children just as He knew us and our parents and their parents, back to the beginning of time. My first angel baby had a purpose and God knew it, but that doesn’t mean the scar goes away. It doesn’t mean it was okay. That child’s DNA will NEVER, EVER be recreated. That is a burden I have to bear. In my ignorance and self-perseverance I took something that was not mine to take, my child’s life.
          By now you can see why this was the first and hardest excerpt to write. My only hope is someone reading this will feel the hurt in my words when I took a life and the joy in my words when I gave life. And even if it changes the heart of just one person, maybe that person is you, then glory be to God. For I received three blessings because He loved me enough to not withhold children from me, he showed me grace. And do not for a second think there was not a consequence. Just as David lost his son because of his adultery with a married woman and the murder of that wife’s husband, I too lost a child because of a sin. My second angel baby was the revelation I needed to see I was never in control of anything. I may have made the choice the first time, but God knew all along I would. So for my second angel baby He reminded me He was in control the whole time, and that he can give it and he can take it away. So in all things seek the Lord and have good friends to call you out if you are in the wrong.
 
 
Psalm 119:10
I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands ~
 
 
 
Romans 6:14
For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under
grace ~