A teenage girl, alone.
All around her is hopelessness, despair. Dead ends. Sadness so heavy, each step is a chore.
Father committed suicide, caving in to the weight of shame from an adulterous affair resulting in a pregnancy, divorce, and then another child he could not parent.
Mother’s employment is this world’s “oldest profession” of prostitution.
“Home” is a one room apartment above the bar where mom ‘works’.
The teenager she’s been dating – the one who swore he’d love her forever – has just walked out of her life. It was tough enough discovering she was pregnant; the pain has been piercing since the revelation that ‘her man’ had also been dating her best friend. She, too, is pregnant.
The man she had thought she might spend the rest of her life with chose to marry her best friend.
He suggested maybe she should get an abortion. There wasn’t much hope, really, for the child she carried.
Something deep within her heart told her the child needed to be born. Instead of death for her child, she chose life. And I am so glad she did!
That teenage girl was my mother.
And she is my hero.
The Hope Scribe 
February 16th, 2013 at 10:41 am
I am humbled by your story, LoriJo. Mine is similar. I find it interesting how so many of us who have come from a painful past have so much to give to others in our present and future. God is our strength!