I had always dreamed of the day when I would be a mother, I couldn't imagine life without children. My first son was conceived in an unexpected, unbelievable and revolting way. One autumn evening, threatened by a man who didn't know how to respect a woman, I became pregnant. I was 19 and knew nothing about life. Two months later I had to face the facts: a child was growing inside of me.

What Do I Do? Have an abortion?

I came to understand the despair that takes away all ability to think, the despair that drives you to throw yourself off the closest bridge and the despair that pushes you to choose abortion. I experienced all these emotions and this is why I cannot tolerate when we judge other women who choose differently from me. It takes so little....

I decided not to take my own life soon after I "knew", but I was very determined to get rid of this undesired being by having an abortion. It seemed easy to do but as the days went by my decision became less clear and my conscience began to bother me. I no longer knew what to do and so I went to speak with a priest I knew. Helped by his prayer, after a sleepless week, many tears, much prayer and discussion, I said "yes" to "his" life, realizing that I was saying a small "no" to "my" life.

This Child Has Meaning

I knew when I agreed to have this unknown child that I was sacrificing my education, my family and I was heading towards an unknown future. I was afraid of everything, of "what everyone would say", of the characteristics the child would inherit, of loneliness, and especially of the suffering that I forced on my fiance whom I loved and who loved me.

The cross is often heavy to carry, dying to ourselves is difficult to accept, but through the cross appears the resurrection. Slowly I came to understand that whether he is conceived by accident or out of real love, each child is always an "Emmanuel", a "God is with us", who helps us to understand better the mystery of the God-Man born 2000 years ago, that mystery of God choosing to become tiny and vulnerable.

A Father For This Baby

I am happy to have given life, a little of my life, to this baby who "fell out of the sky". His birth forced me to grow up and live up to my ideals of respecting life, of non-violence, of accepting the smallest of lives and of trusting in life and in God.

My son taught me that love is stronger than fear, that each person is unique, that faithfulness to what we believe in brings us peace despite the difficulties, that our whole life is a marvelous gift of God. I realize now that when God allows suffering He gives us the strength to bear it, He fills us with his grace and calls us to look at the suffering in the light of his own resurrection. I also want to witness that a woman with a child can be loved for herself: my fiance, despite pressure from family and "friends", despite his fears about the future, did not abandon me - on the contrary - he offered himself as the father of "my" child who became "our" child.

The Oldest of the Family

Love turns out in the end and we married happily and trusting in each other and today we have a little family in which our eldest son is very well integrated. We see all the happiness and wealth that we would not have known if we had not welcomed him eleven year ago, this child who, in a very intense way, disposed us to welcoming life.

Catherine