For a lot of my life, others have considered me to be strong. Perhaps I am. As a single mother raising three children while maintaining a "successful" career, perhaps that is true.
No longer do I want to be strong.
For you see, I find myself in the midst of the hardest thing I have faced in my thirty-something years upon this earth - I find myself unexpectedly expecting. As a single mom. And as an expectant single mother, I am faced with huge, life-altering decisions.
Keep. Abort. Adopt.
Round and round in my head and my heart swirl these decisions, and the plethora of roads - physically, emotionally, spiritually - that each leads down. And not only for me. For the child growing within me. For my three children already here. For the father - though he withdrew from the relationship early on in the pregnancy. For family members.
I often feel I cannot do this.
Any of it.
Carry a child while being a single mother.
I have already been diagnosed with a rare complication that will require surgery to fix after the baby is born. I have a history of high-risk pregnancies. Pregnancies which required months of bed rest.
I don't want to do this.
I don't want to deal with the emotional fall out during and after the pregnancy.
I don't want to deal with a changing body.
I don't want to deal with questions.
I don't want to deal with the father and his words unbacked by actions, and his indecision.
I cannot keep the child.
How can I place the child into the arms of another couple to raise?
How can I raise the child?
I only know that I am not alone, that the Lord is with me. He can work all things for good. He can give me the strength to walk this path. To place my child into the arms of another couple.
To move on.
Although how I do not know. I suppose when the times comes, He'll show up.
Because He's always shown up before.
"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my potion forever."
Psalm 73:26
