Thirteen years ago today, I welcomed to this world my firstborn.  It is so hard to believe that that much time has passed and that he is right there, in the doorway to bein’ a man.  Our lives have been turned upside down a thousand times in these last thirteen years and the results have been truly glorious.  I cannot deny that my life and my son’s life is the handiwork of God.  He has a way of creatin’ something beautiful out of the desperate and hopeless that one can’t help but see His Mighty Hand.

About thirteen years and nine months ago, I could not embrace the truth of Psalm 127:23.  I was a drinkin’, smokin’, partyin’ fool with not enough sense in her head to do otherwise.  It was utter nonsense from the start of my day to the end.  I don’t even know how I was the person I was, I don’t even know her anymore, I can’t for the life of me, answer that naggin’ question, “Woman, what on earth were you thinking’?”

My parents raised me to do right.  They told me to stay away from boys “like that”, they told me not to drink, smoke, do drugs and so forth.  I grew up a “good Christian girl” goin’ to private Christian schools and conservative Christian churches.  I’ve asked myself so many times, “Why, Patti, why?”  Only to be answered with silence. 

So, there I was, lost in two packs of cigarettes and a case of beer a day habit.  My “friends” were about as wholesome as the bottom of my outside trash bin after sittin' for a week in the hot and humid aftermath of a hurricane.  Yeah, that nasty.  Was I happy?  Hardly, why do you think I drank a case of beer?  Because six beers were not enough to numb me to the utter depravity I’d drowned myself in.

I was angry.  My life was a waste.  That “holy” teenager with the “heart for missions” I wrote about in my previous blog died not long after graduation.  I was in trouble and I knew it.  I was so far beyond the point of no return, I shouldn’t be alive today to be honest.

Finally, I had had enough and I shouted at God.  I told Him my life stunk and I was all alone and He promised me that I would never be.  I was so foolish I couldn’t even see that it was me that left Him, not the other way around!  So I told Him, “Fine!”  If He wanted my sorry life, He could take it.

Just so you know, to our Heavenly Father, those are the most precious words He could hear, and be ready for the earth to shake, ‘cause mountains were gonna start movin’!

It wasn’t but a month later that I was stumblin’ down the hallway to my filthy, tiny, ghetto apartment to the bathroom, hopin’ with all my might that what I thought was goin’ on wasn’t what was goin’ on.  Two pink lines.  In that moment, there was not a speck of me that felt two pink lines were an evidence of a “reward”.  Those two pink lines felt like a death sentence.

Praise God that my parents were able to hammer into me two truths.  Number one, every child born or unborn is a life, and abortion is an abominable act.  Number two, your child is innocent of your sins and you’d better not make them suffer for your stupidity.  In that moment, two things stopped that very day, I did not smoke another cigarette, nor did I drink another beer during the course of my pregnancy.

The first thing to go was my pride.  Never in my life have I ever had a more monumentous task before me than the task of goin’ home to my somewhat estranged (by me) parents and tell them I was pregnant.  The second thing to go was my job.  I was fired from the restaurant I worked at because they didn’t want a teenage pregnant girl greetin’ their customers.  I didn’t fit with the partyin’, good-time atmosphere.  The next to go was my “friends”, since I couldn’t swig a beer anymore, and I couldn’t be around cigarette or any other kind of smoke.  I was no good to them, no more fun.  The last thing to go was my baby’s father, who couldn’t even muster the guts to tell his parents.

It was not an easy pregnancy.

Fast forward nine months, and there I was holdin’ my new born baby.  I had no job, no home, no husband, and my child had no Daddy.  But somehow I just knew, somehow, we were gonna make it.  Somehow, God was goin’ to work a miracle in the lives of this scared and lonely teenager and her precious son.  No matter what it took, we would succeed.

I have told my son so many times, that I believe God sent him to save my life.  He was the reason for the severing of ties with an unholy crowd.  He was the sweet healing balm between my parents and me.  He paved the way for my beloved and me to meet.  He kept my beloved and me together when we were both so lost that the only solution appeared to be to quit.

So today, I celebrate not just my son’s birthday, but in a way, my birthday too.  The day that a bratty, selfish teenager was born into a mom.  The road has not been easy.  There have been so many times when there were more bets against me than for me, and there were times when I fully deserved those condemnations and judgements.  I am, sometimes, not smart enough to learn the easy way, so I have had to learn certain lessons several times over.  I have really an amazing capacity to sink to complete foolishness and repeat said foolishness ad nauseum.

Holdin’ my baby boy, lookin’ into his trusting and innocent blue eyes, I knew that things were gonna turn out alright for us, but I had no idea.  Today I am married to the most awesome man that walks this earth.  He was handpicked by God Himself to be my baby’s loving and adoring Daddy.  Never could I have imagined that that little infant would grow to be such a kind, gentle hearted, selfless young man that would adore his siblings and look forward to having more little ones to pester him.  I never would have seen myself being able to stay at home with my children, exactly where I want to be, to homeschool them and be free from the burden of having to help support our family.  I am livin’ out my dream and it is so very sweet.

Now I don’t know what God was rewarding me for when He gave me my son, ‘cause I haven’t done much to deserve the endless joy that I’ve been blessed with in the faces of all my children.  I guess it’s just one of those grace things where I was given a totally unearned gift of grace.  But now that I know how truly amazing each of my children are, now that I embrace that these little lives are my heritage, my reward, I cannot help but fall down at the feet of my Heavenly Father begging Him to bless us with more, lots more.

All this because our Father, in His infinite wisdom, opened the womb of a depraved teenage sinner and blessed her with a child.  Thank you God, and thank you Bryce.  Happy Birthday, my sweet son.