Every year at our church, the priests pass out baby bottles. These baby bottles serve as collection bins for funds to support a couple of crisis pregnancy centers in our area — places that provide food, shelter, and medical care to unwed mothers and their babies during pregnancy and the postpartum period.
Probably because I am pregnant, the collection is more meaningful to me this year. We grabbed our bottle, and I got tears in my eyes. Being pregnant is a difficult undertaking, and I couldn’t possibly imagine doing it completely alone.
It seems to me that the tragedy of these centers isn’t so much that unwanted pregnancies occur but rather that places like this are needed for women who find themselves in these situations.
People make mistakes. Young people (and older people) do get pregnant unintentionally with children they can’t quite support and don’t necessarily want. An unintended pregnancy may be a mistake, but it seems to me that the bigger mistake is the one that leaves these women all alone, searching for strangers to care for them. And that’s the mistake made by the loved ones — the ones who won’t deal with the pregnancy or are too ashamed to deal with a pregnant teen daughter to stand by her side. The first mistake (unintended pregnancy) is a mistake. The second (abandoning a child in her time of need) seems to me to be in a completely different league – for this one violates a sacred covenant between parent and child.
And it led me to think about my girls and led me to make this promise to them:
Throughout all the stages of your lives and throughout any mistakes that you will inevitably face, you will never be alone because I will always be at your side. I won’t solve all of your problems, and I won’t save you from the consequences of your actions. But whatever those consequences may be, I will always be at your side as you face them.
And on that note, I finally found my special song for my third born. I have a special song that I sing to each of my girls, and ever since I got pregnant with number three, I have been searching for the perfect song. And then I found it, and it was clear as day that this song was meant for us.
And I do know that there are far more beautifully sung and arranged versions of this song (most notably the original,) but there’s something about the intimacy of the lyrics in this version that gets to me.