Hey girl,
Listen. I need to talk to you. It’s not about the hole in the ozone you’re singlehandedly responsible for because of the Aqua Net in that perm of yours or that you need to forgive your dad earlier and love him better because he won’t always be around.
This is serious.
And it will change the way you walk for the rest of your life.
So get some coffee (you’ll be addicted by college anyway) and have a seat, okay?
You’ll soon read a story in high school English about a young woman who was forced by her community to wear the scarlet letter “A” to show her sin of adultery to the world. The marking on her dress, along with her public shaming, was her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. You read it as a strange fiction at the time, disconnected and far-fetched from real life. But not too long after that class ends, you will begin to live out your days marked by your own secret A and it will make perfect sense.
There will be a season in your life you split your time between friends, playing every sport, or learning how to drive. You will fall for a boy who says he loves you. That desire to feel loved will pull you out to sea, away from solid ground, and drown you whole. I wish I could change the story here for you, but you will find yourself pregnant.
You’ll soon figure out you’re on your own in this one.
With a daddy’s words about shame if he ever finds you in this boat ringing in your ears and the sight of the boy you loved with his arm around his new girl, you will feel like you don’t have a choice.
But you do.
And you did.
You will make the decision to have an abortion.
It will be easier than you thought it would…or should be. You’ll walk into the clinic expecting to defend or beg for your decision, hoping no one would try and talk you out of it and also wishing someone would. You needn’t have worried: there will be no care about why you’re there, nor comfort or even eye contact.
Just a signature here with a fake name and discharge directions advising against basketball practice for 72 hours.
You’ll go back to school on Monday and almost hemorrhage yourself into the hospital in math class but just wait for the death that will surely come at home because you don’t want to wear that scarlet letter now, do you?
And you don’t tell anyone.
And you live to see another day.
Sort of.
Because life will be different for you now.
You will wake up one morning a mostly whole young woman and go to sleep that same night as a different half-dead version of yourself.
This will not change for more than twenty years.
One day you’ll sit on the edge of the bed and tell the good man you married about that day so long ago at the tender prompting of a God you barely knew.
You’ll brace yourself for the disappointment you deserve to carry for what you did.
And it will never come.
He will hold you and tell you how sorry he is and how much he loves you. He will never mention it again for all the years and you’ll begin to wonder if he forgot what you told him. This will be your first experience with Jesus in this terrible story.
There will be many times you sit in a church service and listen to the pastor discuss how the murdering of babies is a sin. You’ll wonder for just a breath if there’s still someone who doesn’t know that. You’ll concentrate on a cellular level for your body to not twitch or move in reaction to this still-bleeding wound being publicly probed. You’ll feel the heat rising in both cheeks like two red guilty stains that give you away and imagine everyone is staring at you.
You’ll leave church with a heart more tangled and confused than it was coming in that morning.
