hello, thanks for visiting my new blog rawgrace. Why did I name it rawgrace? One definition of raw that I found in the dictionary is “Unnaturally or painfully exposed”. To be raw a feeling I have felt a tremendous amount of in my life. Grace again is something I have been given a tremendous amount of in my life. aren’t we all given that grace! I have been told by numerous people that I should start writing.. Im not going to lie I have been resisting the idea, mostly because Im not a very good speller and my grammer is terrible! Not just that but it is hard to be vulnerable.. or should I say raw.. ! But I have decided that I have a story for a reason and I am going to share it. It doesn’t matter if its grammatically correct or if the spelling is right. You’ll get the idea.
My story begins with that definition of being unnaturally and painfully exposed. Feeling like my life was being unraveled and I had no way of hiding it. No way of covering up the decisions I made. It was all out there exposed for everyone to see. I posted a picture right before this post (still getting the hang of this blog site) but I meant for it to be apart of this one. Thats me. 19 pregnant and single. Going through the hardest time in my life. looking at that picture now I don’t see the the incredible amount of pain that I was feeling, the feelings of fear, or the grieving of my youth. I see a strong person who has endeared themselves to being pregnant. I must have had more faith than I realized.
It all started with a decision. A decision stemmed from a broken heart. When high school relationships mean everything. I graduated high school, entered a world I didn’t know, and had no idea what I wanted to do. I did know that I wanted to be independent so badly. I wanted to go out there and be me without the rules of my parents. I wanted to break out. I loved my parents and who they were in my life. I would have never called myself rebellious because I never got into things my parents didn’t want or act disrespectfully or act crazy. But I would say I was tenacious for my independence. In my time of feeling lonely from a recent break up I allowed myself to entertain a relationship with someone I normally wouldn’t have. Yup the classic story of a rebound gone wrong. I was advised very strongly to stay away from this guy. My dad is a wise man, and he can feel when things are wrong and he is spirited and passionate. well he passionately told my I couldnt be friends with this guy. Remember what I said about me striving for my independence.. well in my mind I thought what is the worst thing that can happen? I know what Im doing.. and maybe I can help him. Plus he was giving me the affirmation I was so wanting to have from a guy. I chose to disregard my dads advice and really anyone else’s for that matter. I put myself in a place where I had to make very big girl decisions. Well my decisions forced me to grow up rapidly. This guy was no where near to being my forever guy and I started realizing that I had drifted so far away from what God would have for me. I took myself out of the spiritual covering of my father that my heavenly father had given me and placed myself in open ready for the taking. Because of that decision I put myself in a very very difficult position. I got pregnant!! my first thought was this can’t be real.. I stared at the two lines.. positive.. its a positive.. This can’t be happening.. How on earth am I going to tell my parents? HOW ON EARTH am I going to tell them who Im pregnant with?? I lied, deceived and did things I would never do and now it was all going to be out in the open. exposed.
So here there I was buckling at the knees. slowly trying to grasp the fact that I was going to have a baby. I was still a baby, I still needed my mom and here I was going to be one. The next 9 months of my life where going to be the most important 9 months of my life. There are so many details and so many things that led me to make the decisions I did after this point. I would love to talk about them all but it would be the longest blog ever I feel, so Im just going to give a quick skeleton version. I told my parents about the pregnancy, and to say they were hurt doesn’t feel like a strong enough word. They were wounded. deeply wounded. Now being a mom myself I can imagine the pain they must have felt. Don’t get me wrong, a baby a new life is never a horrible thing but it happening when you are young and alone is so difficult. My dad found out while he was away, in an email from my mom. I was so scared. All Ive ever wanted to do is make him proud. How in the world would this make him proud. My dad a pastor now has a daughter pregnant right out of high school. He emailed me and said “Amy, I have thousands of black dots on my 56 year old page of life. this is your first, you are a good daughter and we are going to figure this out.” The support I got from my family even though they were hurt and devastated was amazing. Everyone so deeply effected from my selfish decisions. Not just me and my family but this precious little baby growing inside of me. after a few months of trying to figure out my next steps, I had made the decision to go to Houston Texas where I was born to have my daughter. I was there for 4 months. This was the hardest time of my life. I was alone for the most part. I lived with very dear family friends who were incredible support but they had lives so I wasn’t with people all of the time. And for me that was hard. It was painful, I could feel God finding those places of my heart that I had turned off. The issue wasn’t that I was pregnant. The bigger issue was what was happening in my heart that I made the decisions that I made? Why was it so easy for me to manipulate situations and lie to my parents about who I was with? in all Irony I was deceiving the people I loved in my life and was being deceived by somebody who in the long run wasn’t going to be apart of my future. I learned the hard way that your emotions are so powerful and can drive you to do incredible things. Those 4 months felt like the refiners fire. It was so painful and so hard. So many nights of crying out to God not knowing what this next chapter of my life was going to look like. I was grieving my youth because that season of my life ended when I thought I could handle making those “grown up” decisions. It wasn’t about me anymore. I was being crushed only to be rebuilt the proper way. The fire was hot and that time for me was brutal but when I look back at it now it was the most beautiful time of my life. It was beautiful because I was under his Grace. He protected me through all of this and I believe its because I submitted everything to him. I had nothing to offer anymore! My reputation was gone.. My natural ability to get to know people, to be social didn’t seem to work anymore. I felt like I had failure written all over my forehead because I was obviously young and pregnant. I needed God. I needed him to rescue me out of a pit I put myself into and I needed him to protect me and guide my path for the sake of my child. I wanted to do it right I was longing to do it right.
I gave birth to a beautiful little girl and named her Emma. Emma meaning whole and complete. I wanted that for her, even though our situation wasn’t whole and complete I wanted her to know Gods love and feel like she was loved and fought for. It took 9 months for her to develop and grow and be able to live outside of me, and I felt like it took that same 9 months for me to correct myself and allow God to work on my heart. If it wasn’t for getting pregnant I feel as though I would have continued in this awful pattern and would not have seen Gods amazing grace in my life. It was like a slap of reality that catapulted me into being the person I wanted to be. Even though I had a child outside of marriage and was doing this mom thing alone I had never felt so confident and vivacious in my life. I was changed by grace and delivered by God. I was touched by his unfailing love. The love that Jesus had for me when he died on the cross. He saw me he knew me before I was born, He knew how I would fail him and fall into sin and still died so that I could be free. So shame… well that just want apart of my thought process anymore! How could I be ashamed? In my mind that was saying Jesus it just wasn’t enough what you did that day on calvary. Thanks but Im still going to hold onto this shame because I clearly don’t deserve your forgiveness. Nope! That just wasn’t an option. I let that go. I stood proud of my gorgeous little girl and went on to be the mom I always thought I would be. My mission now was to raise her to be a God fearing woman. To help her reach her potential. I was prepared to be alone. I got this I can do this!
5 months later I met a wonderful man. An unexpected change of course that brought redemption to my situation. That is a whole other story in itself. But I thought I would start with how I got here. Im still knew at this blogging thing and I don’t really know how its going to play out or if anyone will really read it! I am liking getting my thoughts out and I love to write. so why not right? 🙂 until next time.
~Amy
rawgraceblog 