We grabbed hands, looked at each other, and opened the door. We stepped inside to the smell of browning beef and the sound of an “Andy Griffith” rerun — to the feeling of normalcy. But we were far from feeling normal. I was wondering how to share my nightmare with my parents: Mom, Dad, I'm pregnant.

Not Me!
My first reaction when I saw the matching pink lines on the home pregnancy test I’d taken was disbelief. My arms and legs shook as I backed out of the bathroom and managed to sit on the side of my boyfriend’s sister’s bed. I considered him my fiance even though I didn’t have a ring and it would be two years before we could get married, or so we thought.

Frank crouched down in front of me in shock, his blue eyes wide and blank and his big, strong, musician’s hands resting on my knees. I focused on those hands and babbled, “I can't believe it. I can’t believe it,” over and over. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that after all this time it had finally happened to us. You never think it will, even when you see it happening to others around you.

I was 20, and Frank was 21. We’d been high school sweethearts and were managing to stay together despite being physically apart at different colleges. I was gearing up to return to The College of William and Mary for my junior year, and he was making plans to go back to Middle Tennessee State University after taking a year off to tour with a band.

Things had been rocky for us during the first year of a long-distance relationship, but we’d held on. And now, a year later, we knew we wanted to spend our lives together, but we were terrified of the consequences of the sexual choices we had made. You see . . . we didn’t wait.

It All Started When . . .
I met Frank in the youth group of our church. The romance aspect of our friendship evolved slowly over the course of two years, but when it ignited we were still too immature to handle the intensity of our feelings. We knew our physical actions violated what God planned for our lives but could never develop the self-control needed to right our wrong. Once you cross that line, it takes God’s strength to turn things around. I can admit now that we didn’t pray as fervently as we should have for God to give us His strength.

After a while it seemed useless to try, and we developed the warped thinking of the guilty-minded. We knew it was wrong, but we loved each other; we were even going to get married someday. We would certainly never encourage our friends to follow our lead. But who knows how many bad decisions we influenced with our decision to sin?

Sinning we were, no matter how hard society tries to convince itself that the commitment of marriage has nothing to do with the passion of sex. The act in and of itself isn’t a sin; God created it with the full intention of human enjoyment. I discovered this when I read Song of Solomon in the Old Testament, a beautiful depiction of the love between a man and his wife. But I found that sex without maturity and a lifelong unbreakable commitment in marriage is a sin. It’s a sin that everyone knows can change your life, but few take seriously.

Somewhere in the back of our minds, Frank and I knew our behavior would catch up with us. This was true not because God was punishing us, but because reproduction is a fact of life. Sin has consequences! As we sat down on my parents’ couch to admit our wrongdoing and try to deal with its outcome, I felt a strange certainty that this moment was as bad as it would get.

Looking into my parents’ faces and revealing what I’d tried to hide was a moment so painful I can’t let myself remember it for more than a few minutes. After that my recollections become a blur and the little details escape me, eclipsed by the emotion I was feeling.

Mom had been in the middle of making dinner, and I called her into the family room where Dad was watching TV. She came in and sat down, and I asked my dad to turn off the TV. Immediately the silence seeped into my ears and drowned out the words my brain was trying to get my mouth to say.

Finally I took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”

Numbness spread across my chest when the white-hot words leapt off my tongue. Shame soon replaced it.

My mom dropped her head and said, “Oh, no,” rubbing her hands over her face. She raised her head and met my father’s eyes in silence.

As they stared mutely at each other, tears trailed down my cheeks. Seeing my crying, Frank fought tears of his own.

Finally my dad said, “Well, what’s your plan?” His voice was brusque and matter of fact, and I knew he was dealing with anger over the inevitable change of plans for my future. He’s the only one of his parents’ eight children who graduated from college, and I was going to be only the second of the 30 grandchildren to follow his lead.

My brothers dabbled with college but eventually decided to work in the family business instead. I knew my dad was disappointed about this. I was miserable, thinking I had dashed his last hopes.

The next minutes were filled with a tearful relief for Frank and me as we got things out in the open. Meanwhile my parents tried to climb out from under the landslide of disappointment and grief that had engulfed them. In a matter of minutes I understood the wonderful gift God had given me in my parents. I’d been right in feeling that the initial confession would be the worst part.

Dad pledged that I would graduate from college; he’d help however needed. Mom didn’t even cry. In fact, she crawled into my bed the next morning and held me, wishing she could somehow transmit the wisdom that only comes with age and experience. But she knew I had to acquire that on my own.

Changes
I spent the next few weeks trying to get comfortable in my new skin. I woke up each morning hoping that today would prove to be a little easier, that I wouldn’t feel quite as ashamed when my parents looked into my eyes. I’d never experienced their serious disappointment before. I’d never found myself growing apart from them in my teenage years as many of my friends were doing with their parents.

The hardest thing was continuing to go to church on Sunday, where my mother’s close friends knew what was going on. The music minister was one of these people, someone I’d gotten to know very well when I was in the youth choir, singing solos and playing lead parts in musicals. I knew I was someone the younger kids admired. I felt horrible to be setting the wrong kind of example for once.

Months later, at my baby shower, one of my mom’s friends told me how her daughter wanted to be just like me. She wanted to sing and dance in the high school’s show choir, take advanced placement classes and go to William and Mary. I smiled at her while crying inwardly in shame. She must have noticed because she gave me a one-armed hug and kissed my cheek.

Soon the planning started, and the most jarring changes happened first. I transferred colleges so I could live at home, and Frank dropped out of school to work for my dad. I was angry with myself and cried when I thought about how much I loved William and Mary, with its beautiful historical buildings and close-knit campus life.

I’d already called my two best friends, and they’d cried to hear I wasn’t coming back. I had to resign my position as vice president of my Christian women’s a cappella group. I listened to the CD we worked so hard on the spring before I became pregnant and missed them very much, all the while knowing they were another group of people who were depending on me whom I had let down.

It was hard, but I had no one to blame but myself. Amid all of this, thankfully, there were things that gave me hope and encouragement.

True Commitment
Frank and I were married within a few months. We found incredible solace in the reality of spending our lives together. It had brought us a lot of anguish thinking we’d have to wait two more years before we could make that trip down the aisle.

Prior to my pregnancy, I prayed for God to help us make it through the next two years or to find some way to get married sooner. Obviously I didn’t have the patience to wait for His answer, and because of that, my wedding day will always fall short of the perfect day it could’ve been.

After the wedding, my husband moved in with me at my parents’. My life has changed immeasurably, but I’ve learned a lot. God wasn’t retaliating for my sin by allowing me to get pregnant. It’s not His fault that I no longer sing in an a cappella group or am free to make whatever decisions about my future I feel like making. That was 100 percent my fault.

Even though it was difficult to have a baby so young, I’ll never wish that I had avoided the stresses of parenthood by getting an abortion. Of course, if I could go back in time to when Frank and I first decided to have sex, I’d make the right choice instead of the wrong one. Who knows what I could have accomplished by the time Frank and I started a family if we hadn’t disregarded what God told us was right?

God has made it clear that no matter how well things turn out, sin is sin. Because I can’t go back in time, I pray that in some way my experience will keep at least one young couple from the harshness an unplanned, out-of-wedlock pregnancy brings to your life.

My life now is harder than it had to be, and because of this I understand that God declares certain things right or wrong for a reason. I’ve learned that sinful actions aren’t forbidden to test people’s self-control, but because God knows how badly we humans can mess up our lives.

I know He has a plan for my life, one with as many blessings as there are obstacles. I thank Him every day for teaching me the selflessness and strength that motherhood requires even though I didn’t have the maturity at first to deserve that gift. Most of all, I pray He’ll keep me close to Him and help me put to use the wisdom I’ve gained from dealing with the consequences that wrong actions produce.