Toni, You’re Pregnant

I tried to drown out the noise of what the doctor had just told me. I believed that if I closed my eyes tightly enough and wished away the words, they would disappear and be untrue. "Toni, you don't have the flu. You're pregnant. You're experiencing morning sickness". I looked up at the doctor and silently pleaded with her to be lying to me. I felt as though a bag of bricks had just hit me upside the head. I felt dizzy and confused. "How could this have happened?" Of course I knew…
 
…I was 19-years-old, in college, and single. My (ex) fiancé and I had just broken up two weeks prior to this news and I felt alone. I walked back to my dorm room in total disbelief. I didn't know what to think. I felt numb. I felt overwhelmed with how these few words had just completely wrecked my life, and I had only just found out. I picked up the phone and called him, the one person in the world I wanted to avoid. As I gave him the news, the other end of the phone was silent. “What are we going to do?”, I asked. Silence. “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?”, I yelled. His response was cold and short. “I guess we’ll have to get married now.”
 
Later that night I lay in my bed in my dorm room all alone, crying. I still believed that if I wished hard enough, it would go away, that the reality of my world would just go away. Over the next few weeks I tried to go about my daily life: classes, my university job, visiting my family. I didn’t tell many people. I was too ashamed. We had decided that we weren’t going to tell our families until we absolutely needed to, so I felt even more alone with virtually no support system. He was 1,000 miles away in school himself.
 
Our conversations over the next weeks mostly consisted of what was going to happen once he returned home after the summer and how we would work out this “marriage thing”. After all, he was the one that had broken off the engagement, and he didn’t seem to keen on wanting to get married—it was “all for the baby’s sake”. In my heart I knew it wasn’t the answer, but in my mind I wanted it because I (thought I) wanted him.
 
In a crazy twisted series of events, I was forced to pack up and leave school halfway through the spring semester. It was March, and he was due home in a few weeks for spring break. That was when we would finally be able to sit down face-to-face and sort all this out. Or so I thought. A few days after settling back into “home” life, I started feeling severe pains and bleeding. It lasted two days, and finally I went to the hospital. Just as suddenly as I had found out I was pregnant, I found out that I was miscarrying at 12 weeks gestational. For what seemed like the 3^rd real time in less than 4 months, I felt like the rug was being ripped from underneath me. I couldn’t believe everything that was happening in my life, and how “used to it” I had become. I somehow started to believe that I deserved this “punishment” I was receiving, that it was God’s way of “getting me back” for not living my life the way I was supposed to. After all, I knew all along that what I was doing was wrong and I chose to ignore it.
 
Years passed and I barely shared this with a soul. Very few people in my life knew of the series of events that had taken place during these months. I always felt too ashamed to tell people, and I never wanted anyone to think badly of him, either, so I decided it was best to keep it to myself. Even in sharing my testimony it was always something I left out. One of the first people I shared this part of my history with was Jeremy when we were dating, and it took every ounce of my being to share it with him.
 
I’ve seen Jesus heal my hurt and restore my heart over the years, both from this broken sexual relationship and the loss of the baby. It took a long time to be okay again, but He was ever so patient and kind towards me because He loves me and He never deserted me during my time of need.
 
This happened in 2007. Fast forward to now: I start sharing my testimony with girls on the Race and people during ministry, and sharing this part of my past seems to come naturally to me. It never occurred to me that before now I had never really shared openly with people this part of my life. I believe that there are people out there that need to hear this story. I believe that nothing happens by chance. Yes, I made choices that weren’t good ones. I chose to live in sin for that year that we were together, and I reaped consequences from it. But if ever I have learned a lesson from living in sin, it is that God WILL use all things together for HIS GOOD. God is using my testimony for His good, to bring healing to girls’ lives. What I’m sharing on the Race freely and openly is something that, before now, I never even shared with my closest friends and family back home. It’s something that now God is telling me I need to tell people back home, and now I must obey. It’s something He’ll continue to use as long as I am obedient in sharing the story with others.
 
He has called me to be open and honest with everyone in this because, for so long this was the one part of me that I didn’t want anyone to know about. This is the one part I was okay hiding and letting sit under the rug. He wants to use it, but He can’t use it if I don’t tell it. He wants to bring healing to girls’ lives just like He has mine. He’s a Healer, and He uses past hurts to bring healing.