Oh, dear girl, you do not need to do this thing.
This act you’re contemplating? Please, I’m begging you—reconsider. You think you need to do it, that you have no other option, that to think of anything else would be life-altering and damaging in unfixable ways. I understand, truly I do. I have been where you are. Well, not exactly, as all circumstances and situations are unique. But I, too, have been host to an unwanted baby created and growing inside of me. I understand the bleak despair, the feeling of grotesqueness, the irritation that something has come along that can potentially alter and ruin any good future I planned for myself.
I get it. I really do.
But will you permit me a few moments to tell you more? To tell you that, in a few minutes of despair, you could commit an act that will prove to be more ruinous than saving the life of the human inside you? To tell you that the disappointment you feel now could feel like nothing when you sense the first flutter from the inside of your belly, as you realize there is a unique life there? To tell you that your shattered dreams will weigh as nothing when compared to the heartbeat you will hear, the tiny foot that will press you from your insides, the inner compunction you will develop to protect that infant life within you?
Those things will come, dear girl, I promise you, they will come.
You have to give yourself time to adjust. Time to accept a bad decision (or two or three) that you made, time to realize a different life potential, time to understand that sacrifice is part of every single adult human life, and this is your clarion call to do something right by someone else. You need time to process all of those things, and so, so much more. But give yourself the gift of time to pray, to consider, to feel the weight of what is happening roll you over, wash over you and under you, knock you to your knees, and, then, finally, to look up, chin up, and determine to save one helpless to save herself.
I won’t give you the tired lines that the life you carry within you could be the next Einstein or Nelson Mandela or even Freddie Mercury. We all realize the improbability of any of those, and those are quite beside the point anyhow. I will tell you, however, that that life within you is full of unknown potential, that it is one uniquely made and created for this life, and that every chance must be given to the person now dependent upon you.
I’m not telling you to keep the baby, to raise it yourself. I wouldn’t presume to do that. I’ve seen the numbers—you’ve probably seen some numbers, too—we both know that the waiting lists for couples who desire a baby of their own to love and to raise is years-long. We both know that it would be a fairly easy thing to find a loving family to gift the child to.
I’m just telling you, girl, that it’s hard—so hard!—to do a holy, righteous thing sometimes, but that to give breath to another human being is one of those hard and holy things, especially when we don’t want to be any part of the process itself. I am telling you that to sacrifice more than nine months to not destroy a life is well worth every single minute for the rest of your life. I am telling you that you will feel satisfied when that baby breathes its first gasp of fresh air, and you gasp your relief that you, indeed, delivered on your promise to give a life a chance to become its own.
Am I making you feel guilty with all this? To be honest with you, as one who has been in your shoes, that doesn’t matter much to me. I care about you, your mental and spiritual health, and I care very much about giving people a full shot at life, and that’s why I beg of you to consider the words which I am saying.
“We haven’t met,” you say, “how could you care?” I care about you because I have been you. I have faced an unwanted pregnancy and I abhorred what was growing inside of me at first. I wanted to rid myself of it at all costs. But my hand was stayed, my grief process accomplished and stretched me in unimagined ways, and I was able to hear the first throaty cry from a person delivered from my own womb.
That, girl, is what I wish for you. Very much so.
Please know that my words here represent my own life, but they also portray story after countless story that has been told me by women in similar circumstances. Not one of those women ever regretted their decision to place their own lives on hold for less than a year. To a person, they all felt as if an invisible hand patted them on the back and affirmed their self-sacrificial decision to give breath to another life.
Join our ranks, dear girl. We will salute you and then hug you.
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