This subject is a source of turmoil for me. So here is the story of my life, with all the skeletons out of the closet.

I wanted a child so badly all my young life, but my husband couldn’t have children with me because of an accident he was involved in when he was young. I wanted to adopt, but he refused to raise someone else’s child. I was trapped in an unfulfilling relationship because I wanted children. I thought that is what God put me on this earth for…to share my love and attention with children. After almost nine years, we divorced. He remarried in three months…to someone with children. Yes, he raised someone else’s children.

Then my next relationship after five years resulted in a child. Finally, I was blessed. When she was two months old, he left us, saying it was too hard. I was confused since I was the one breastfeeding. I’m not sure how it was hard for him!  He got me pregnant again when he came over to visit our daughter.  When I told him I was pregnant, he said, “No, you can’t be!” I said, “What are you talking about? I told you it was that time of the month when I could get pregnant! Were you too drunk to understand what that meant!” I found out years later why he said that.  He refused to acknowledge the child or go to the doctor with me. I knew with a child under one at home and a new one on the way. I had a minimum wage job and attended a community college to provide for my child alone. So, I made the decision – alone – to abort the fetus. Hiding in fear of what others would think of me and fearing God would punish me forever, I drove to Saginaw alone to the “butcher shop” and my nightmare began. I cried so deeply; my heart was torn in half after the procedure. I could not drive myself home until I cried every bit of fluid from my body.

Then about a year later, he came over drunk. I told him he could not have sex with me because it was that time of the month, using the rhythm method. He was too drunk to drive home, so for safety purposes I let him sleep on my couch. Sure enough, in the night he came to my room and raped me. Now I have another child to deal with. I will never again go through the pain of the aftermath from an abortion.  So, I decided to continue this pregnancy and was blessed with a perfect baby boy who completed my family: one girl and one boy. I loved my children, even though we struggled through the financial issues of a single parent household. Their dad did not pay child support for the first seven years.

At his father’s funeral, a child ran up to him saying, “Daddy, Daddy.” I was in shock. I was attending the family reunions for 15 years and never saw this child or the child’s mother. I wondered which neighbor this was. I was horrified to learn it actually was his child, born between my children, at the same time I had had an abortion and killed our baby. That was the reason he said, “No, you can’t be.” He was sleeping with the neighbor’s daughter and had a child with her! Did it make me feel better knowing he wasn’t raising that child either? No, I felt bad for the child. But it was better for my children since her father made her file for child support, even though they didn’t need the money. That forced him into claiming my children too, so his money was divided among the three children, two of which were mine.  There was a fourth child of his that I paid for in emotional distress! I gave up on their father after 15 years of waiting for him to stop drinking. I moved where he couldn’t find us. That was the worst part of my life.

That is until 18 years later when God took my son. He did it by a gunshot to the chest. That broke my wounded heart again. Was it punishment for killing the other child I had been blessed with? Now my daughter and I grieve the loss. The three of us went through life with God in the center of our world. Youth groups and church helped us through all those tough times. After graduating from college, I got a job with benefits at the college. I thought life was finally turning around, and we were blessed. We could buy meat instead of living on chicken noodle soup and hot dogs. My children were two years apart, so they were very close. My daughter was traumatized by his loss. But we rely on God to hold us up now, so we aren’t falling. 

Now I help other parents and grandparents who lose children with The Compassionate Friends. Some are through abortions, miscarriages, accidents, medical errors or illnesses, violence, suicide, or homicide. Any reason you lose a child, whether it was you’re doing or not, it is extremely painful (and) devastating! Much worse than the tiny daily tribulations you go through raising a child alone.