I had also begun dating my now husband, Paul, and he was leaving the school too for other personal reasons. (If he wants to share his story sometime, I might see if he'll guest blog on this!) I knew why he was leaving and it added to my feelings of wanting to leave.
Right now, I want to stop and say that CFNI is a GREAT place and would highly suggest it to anyone who is wanting to have a deeper walk with God and learn what He wants for them in life. There is nothing wrong with CFNI, it was all me. So please don't take my negative comments as if CFNI is a bad place, because they're wonderful! I miss it and we have considered going back to search after the heart of God, for His plan for our lives!
While I feel that I made the right decision, for me, to leave, I also regret the decisions I made afterwards. When I left, I was angry at God, I felt insecure in myself and even though I knew God was real, I didn't feel He was real for me. Unless you've been in that place, what I described above might be confusing. I thought He cared about everyone else and could care less how I felt. I didn't think He cared about me. If He cared, why would he allow all this stuff in my life that was confusing? Why did He let me suffer in my church, where I felt alone and sad the last four years I was there? Why didn't He just stop the elders from abusing their authority? Why didn't He save me from all that? So ultimately, when I left, I didn't care about God. I didn't care what He thought. I didn't want to know Him. I didn't want to go to church. I didn't want to have anything to do with God.
I remember one day that my Mom was talking with me about my struggles and snapping at her when she mentioned God. I didn't want to hear His name. I didn't want anyone telling me God cared, or loved me. I closed myself off, and even to this day I have a hard time accepting love from anyone, especially God. It's something I'm working on, because God loves to love, and He loves through His people and accepting love from Him is apart of being His child.
So right after I left CFNI, I was in a carnal state of mind. I had no desire to please God. He was too hard to please anyways, in my mind. I couldn't please the people in my old church, or anyone else for that matter, so why not just live my life for me? Make myself happy, became my motto.
Paul didn't want to go home to his parents place at the time, and he loved me, so he wanted to stay close to me. My parents offered for him to stay with us (maybe I should have my Mom guest blog on here to share their side someday!) and of course, the risks of two young-loves came with that. We promised we weren't wanting to be inappropriate with each other and that we would abstain from sexual activities. We wanted to get to know each other better and have a regular dating life. But one night, I was coming out of my room to get something and he had come out too, and we kissed. While our parents knew we were holding hands and kissing, they didn't know we had met in the hallway. The first time wasn't planned. But then our carnal natures took over and we met nightly to kiss. And those kisses led to touching and touching led to sex. I remember that day clearly. I was so upset over my failure to keep myself pure for marriage. I felt dizzy and in shock. I knew I had displeased God, and I felt my soul had been condemned to hell forever. I kept thinking, "What is the point of trying to live for God after having sex before marriage? He's never gonna forgive me and I'm going to just go to hell anyways." Paul felt the same. I won't go into a lot more detail on this part of my life, because I feel part should remain private, but ultimately, we fell pregnant.
My first missed monthly warned me that something was up. I went and told Paul that I thought I was pregnant. We hadn't figured out how to tell my parents that we'd betrayed their trust and had failed our promise to them. I was so scared of how they'd respond. And I was disappointed in myself for disappointing them. I hated hurting them. And I knew that when I told them, that they would be disappointed, angry and that the trust they had in me would be broken. On top of the fear of telling them I'd had sex, now I had to tell them I thought I was pregnant. So after letting nearly 3 weeks pass, Paul and I went to the grocery store and I bought a pregnancy test. I went into the grocery store bathroom and took the test. In minutes, the two little pink lines told me what I thought to be true: I was pregnant. I had a mixture of feelings wash over me. I was going to be a Mommy! But my stomach churned at the thought of having to tell my parents. To be honest, I panicked and even considered abortion for a few haphazard, fearful, scared minutes. I voiced my thoughts to Paul and he immediately told me there was no way we should consider that; that this baby was wanted and we would get through this together. He brought me back to earth and I have regretted thinking those thoughts ever since that day.
I hesitate to share what I did just now, but I feel it is a vital part of my testimony. Am I ashamed? Am I sorry? Yes. A BIG resounding yes. I just hope my story can give someone else hope.
Another day passed and I began to experience worsening pregnancy symptoms. I knew I needed to tell my Mom and Dad about my pregnancy. So I asked my Mom if we could go out to eat and talk. I had no clue how to tell her what was going on. We sat down at the table in this little Mexican food restaurant in West, Texas. We ordered our food and I let her talk. I kept biting my lip, wishing the news would just flash across the sky, so I wouldn't have to open my mouth to tell her. Tears threatened to overflow several times. Finally I said, "Mom, I need to tell you something. Paul and I broke your trust and....I'm so sorry. I'm pregnant." She put her fork down and began to cry. She didn't finish her food, and asked the waiter for a box to take her food home. She didn't say much at the time. She just wanted to be alone and figure it all out in her mind. She did ask me why. I had no answer for her. My heart still breaks as I write this. The lump won't go away. I wish I had never broken my parents trust. I wish I had done things different. I wish I had cared about God. I wish I hadn't gotten pregnant. I wish, I wish, I wish..... But wishes don't fix things. Wishes don't change what happened.
I texted Paul and told him I had told Mom. He was at my house, waiting on me to get back. My Dad was in town, so my Mom dropped me off at the house and went into town to meet up with my Dad and tell him what was going on. We waited at the house for them to come home and tell us what they wanted us to do. I knew they were going to have a range of emotions and I was unsure of what to expect from my Dad. After about 2 hours, they called and told us that they didn't want Paul in the house and that we needed to leave and meet my Dad somewhere, so he could talk to us.
My Dad was extremely calm with us. It was the best thing for me at the time. I was relieved and thankful that he was understanding; disappointed, upset a bit, but understanding. He told us that Paul needed to find another place to live, but that he was welcome to keep talking with me. After all, he was the father of the baby and we needed to figure out how we were going to work our lives out, to raise this baby. My dad and Paul worked together to find him a place to temporarily stay while he worked at getting a job and finding a place to live permanently. Paul and I began to discuss what we wanted to do; we decided on getting married. During this time, we told his family, and it wasn't received very well. We had disappointed and angered everyone.
Paul began putting in a few job applications to some places, but there wasn't really any interest to hire him, and he was a little unsure of how to even get a job. At the time, both of us were young and immature. We had no clue what life held for us and we were embarking into unchartered waters that felt scary, dark and lonely. My Dad talked to Paul about joining the military, because it would be a stable environment for us. Paul had already considered joining the US Navy when he was 17 years old, so he began looking into different military options. He was mostly interested in the Air Force, but after talking to them and having issues with getting his paper work done, we went to the Army office to talk to them. We completed the paperwork and even went to MEPS to pick out his job. He had a couple of options with them. I got cold feet and told him I didn't want him to join the Army. It was way too scary, especially with the US being at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So we went to talk to the Navy recruiters about his options with them. I felt a little better about him being in the Navy. We began the process with them, got the paper work done and picked out his job. We wanted a quicker start date, so we had two options for his job; he chose to be a Machinist Mate. (They work in the belly of the ship with the steamers. They are the ones that make the ship move.)
During all of this, I was having some complications with the pregnancy. I was loosing tons of weight (I had a total loss of 19lbs during the entire pregnancy and I was already skinny when I started out). I started to bleed a lot and have contractions that were so severe I could hardly move or talk at 15 weeks. We rushed to the ER, thinking I was miscarrying. They did an ultrasound and told us that we had twins, but that one had passed away. The other one was just fine and it's heart was beating steadily. My midwife kept a close eye on me for the next few weeks. My heart was breaking the entire time. I thought God was punishing me for being a horrible person and sinning by having sex before marriage. We didn't know that I was pregnant with twins either, so it was a shock to Paul and I. We were grieving the loss of our baby, but also celebrating that we still had one! I guess when we went to the Care center for pregnancy, the sonographer didn't detect the twin. Maybe she just didn't even look once she saw the one. I'm not sure. I've heard of twins hiding behind the other in the early stages too. We had our first sonogram at week 8. We named our Angel baby, "Blessing." We didn't get to find out the gender, but we have felt it was a girl, for some reason. I still miss my baby! Sometimes I still ask God why!
I was also throwing up daily; I couldn't hold water, or food down. I could barely move away from the bathroom for the first 6 months of my pregnancy. And things were getting stressful while we prepared for him to go to the US Navy bootcamp. His ship off date was July 16th, 2010.
The military wouldn't accept me as a dependent unless we were married, which meant his paycheck would be smaller, no insurance for me and no housing for me and the baby. So we decided to push our wedding date up before his ship date. We planned our wedding for April 18th, 2010. We didn't have a whole lot of friends at the time, so we just had family and two friends of mine there, Anna and Chelsea. Paul's family was unable to make it, so we flew out to California to be close to my family who lived there. They all came and made our day very special. My parents bought me a beautiful dress, and rented a gorgeous place that was outdoors with roses and wildflowers all around. It was the most beautiful wedding ever! I am so blessed to have had such nice wedding, even after all that I had put my parents through.
After our wedding, we began getting ready for him to leave for 9 weeks for bootcamp. I dreaded missing him, especially with me having issues with the pregnancy. We found out he would have A-school (a specialty school for training him as a Machinist Mate) up in Chicago, where his bootcamp was going to be. So my parents offered to help me move up there, and live in an extended stay hotel. I took them up on the offer and I packed up, and moved there. He was to be in A-school for around 18 weeks, I think it was, so he would be there when I had our son. We wanted him to be close by when the baby was born. We didn't know if he would be able to attend the birth or not, but on normal weekends, unless he had watch duty in his ship, he would be able to spend time with me and then he could see the baby. We also knew he would have some evenings to spend with me.
This has been long enough....so I'm going to stop here and pick up later on.
No comments:
Post a Comment