Before She Was Born

Someone asked a question that got me thinking.

Meeting with a bunch of fabulous women who gather regularly to challenge each other and grow together, a question was thrown out to the group.

“Who is someone in your life, other than a family member, who has had a significant influence on you?”

Who would I say?

I thought about my answer as I listened to the descriptive stories of their mentors, women or men who had reached down into their lives as encouragers, role models, examples, when they had been young and impressionable.

I too, have been blessed to have been surrounded by good and faithful people who’ve gone head of me to set examples of who I want to become, at least in part. But which one would I highlight in this particular conversation?

Putting my mind in search mode, I sorted through my file of memories for a specific someone I could feature, someone who had contributed to who I am.

I was scanning through my mental section marked “older, wiser, seasoned” when my search was unexpectedly rerouted. Into my mind popped a picture of someone I had never before thought to acknowledge in this role.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how very much indeed, this person has influenced me, and has blessed my life in so many ways.

Even before she was born.

I had known her mom for years. We were best friends. We practically lived at each other’s houses. We were like sisters, for good and for bad.

So that cold and gloomy February day when she faced the threat of a bigger problem than either of us had ever before encountered in our relatively short and sheltered lives, she came to me.

We went together to the clinic where her fears were confirmed.

She was pregnant. She was 17.

We gathered up all the materials they barraged us with regarding the various options available to her and took them home to my house to read over and consider.

There, on my bedroom floor, we laid out all the pamphlets. We prayed together.

Of course we had heard all the arguments between the pro-choice and pro-life camps. We were children of the 80s and this was very hot topic. But facing the facts so personally bore a whole new meaning as she processed the words she had heard and their further explanations laid out in the material collected from the clinic.

They told her she had choices. Three of them from what we could decipher.

One, a procedure that would eliminate the “problem” all together, would be the most practical they said, and would allow for the least amount of impact in her life.

Two, she could carry the baby to term and arrange to have it adopted to a family who most likely desperately wanted it. This of course, although short-term, would take an extraordinary commitment, not to mention sacrifice.

And third, she could have this baby and actually raise it herself as a teenage mother. This seemed to be frowned upon though, seeing as it would significantly alter the course of her life.

Understandably, she was scared silly to report this life shattering news to her strict, Dutch-Reformed parents. I was scared for her. But there was no way around it so eventually, she mustered up enough courage to face the unavoidable.

And I will forever respect them for their response. Once they recovered from the initial shock, they did something that I, in my teenage mind, would never have expected—they embraced her. Eyes filled with tears and arms with love, they embraced her.

I’m not going to lie; things were very tense in that house for quite some time as they decided together what should be done.

The handsome guy, who had swept her off her feet and had been so convincing of his love, showed up reluctantly when he heard the news of his impending fatherhood. But not for long. He soon dropped out of high school and out of their lives.

So eventually, they came to the decision to find a good adoptive home for this baby to join when it arrived in October.

Time went on and my friend went through the process of finding a family for the life that was growing insider of her. Pouring over applications and scrapbooks from desperate couples that wanted to adopt a newborn, she eventually landed on a family that she could accept as parents for her baby.

Being pregnant in high school is not an easy matter but she navigated the ups and downs with grace and pride. A slightly nauseous and thick-waisted date she did make with her other single friends who went stag to senior prom that year.

Every now and then, she’d tap me during music class and have me touch the side of her belly to feel for myself the person that was happening there.

I still feel sad when I think what could have been if she had been persuaded to follow the advice that the clinic had suggested for the fate of this life I felt kick my hand while I sat on the bleachers during concert choir rehearsal.

To her credit, and with my forever respect, my best friend and sister from another mother, never considered that choice.

Of the three choices presented to women when the cells of a tiny human are combined inside of their bodies, two of the three choices are clearly pro-life.

So, from what I see, two-thirds of the Pro-Choice movement is pro-life.

And pro-life she was. Long before she was even born she was full of life, as if she was aware from her beginning of her mission to bring life to everyone around her.

As the time of her arrival grew nearer and her mother grew to understand the essence of this exceptional life bursting within her, I watched her grow gradually despondent. Eventually, she came to realize that the decision she had made, to give this baby away just moments after she came into our world, was not an option for her any longer. So, with much thought and prayer, she decided, with the support of her parents, to keep this child—a decision that would significantly alter her future forever.

I saw a paradoxical but invigorative transformation in my friend as she decided to willingly give up her own life for another, her plans for college and any hope of a “normal” teenage life along with it.

She named her Tiffany Ann—“God’s manifestation of grace.”

And that she was. A blessing from the creator in the tangible form of a baby girl.

She infected everyone with her smile and the sparkle in her eye.

On the day she was dedicated, as godmother and pseudo-aunt, I promised to love her like my own and pledged in my heart to contribute to her life as a positive and nurturing role model.

Little did I know how much she would contribute to mine.

My unfettered life moved on a year later as I left for college, but I grabbed every moment I could with her when home for visits and summer breaks, taking her to movies long before she was able to talk and feeding her french fries at every opportunity.

She made for the most adorable 5 year-old flower girl standing beside me at the alter when I married, and we both cried when I moved out of state with my new husband.

Several years passed and I began to feel the reality of our separation. But as soon as she was old enough to travel on her own, she would come spends chunks of her summer with me and my growing family. Late night trips to Walmart, evenings on the sofa watching movies and eating junk food, attempts at highlights, adventures at the beach, and train trips to NYC were interspersed with lessons about life presented as subsidies for her to take home to add to the already wise counsel of those who surrounded her.

Her honesty and insight always astounded me, her joy of life contagious.

When the special light she had always carried in her sparkling eyes did fade for a short time during her college years, I prayed earnestly for it to return.

And it did. The One who had put it there in the first place put it back. The One who has always been watching out for her from the moment she was knitted together in the womb of her brave mother, brought it back, along with a special man for her to lavish her love and contagious joy upon.

And so, the sacrifice made by her mother so she could have life over two and a half decades ago is still bringing life.

For me, she continues to astound me with her appreciation for life and her pure perspectives as she sets an example of what it looks like to be a loving and dedicated wife. A wife who actively loves the man picked out especially for her, enabling him to become the man God wants him to become, nurtured by her love—the kind of love that makes you want to be a better person.

She is an example to my own teenage daughters (who adore her) of what real beauty looks like when it bubbles up with confidence from the inside and pours out to enhance the already beautiful form that contains it.

And now, she is growing a baby of her own. An exciting yet daunting assignment.

But I have no doubt, she will handle this commission with the same life-giving initiative she has so naturally given to all of us who have had the honor of being loved by her.