It wasn’t like she had a plan. She didn’t. Teresa had seen other pregnant single women and knew she never wanted that to be her life. But, at 25-years-old – frightened and worried about her future – it was her life.
Now, 36 years later, Teresa introduces her story not as a woman looking back on a hard life, but as a woman amazed.
“This is a story about hope,” Teresa told Pregnancy Help News.
[Click here to subscribe to Pregnancy Help News!]
Though unplanned, there was never a time Teresa considered another option for her pregnancy; there was never a doubt that she would carry and parent her child.
She was familiar with the life of a single mom, having come from a line of single moms.
“The men in my family…were all taken away somehow,” Teresa said, recounting her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother’s husbands.
Either by death or desertion, the result was the same – the homes in Teresa’s family were led by strong, single women.
“I knew if my mama could do it, I could do it,” Teresa said.
But she is clear that knowing she could do it was not the same as knowing how she was going to do it. And there was a lot of fear around the “how” part for Teresa.
Her initial fears were compounded when, at five months pregnant, the father of her baby got on a plane following military orders that would keep him out of the country for the next two years.
“Lord, I’m going to rely on you”
At that time, Teresa didn’t have a relationship with the Lord.
“I knew that God was out there. He’s in that book called the Bible. But I didn’t know Him,” she said.
Overwhelmed, Teresa turned to the God she didn’t know.
“I don’t have a clue what I’m doing,” Teresa prayed. “How am I going to afford me? How am I going to afford my baby? I’m all by myself. Lord, I’m going to rely on you.”
“And that was my Damascus Road moment,” Teresa said.
Sudden, immediate, and profound – like Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus - that moment changed Teresa forever.
In the middle of an unplanned pregnancy, with an unknown future, Teresa found the Savior of her soul.
Overwhelmed by the generous goodness of God
At seven months pregnant, she was baptized.
She worried that the pastor wouldn’t be able to pull her up out of the water, but he promised her, “I haven’t drowned one yet.” Teresa laughs as she retells the story.
And she cries. She cried often during her interview with Pregnancy Help News. But not tears of sadness, anger, or loss. These were the tears of a woman overwhelmed by the generous goodness of God. It’s an awe that has not paled with the passage of time.
“I know you can’t hang your salvation on somebody else’s coattails,” Teresa said. “But I really believe that’s why [my daughter] Rachel was just so precious to me.”
Teresa doesn’t see her pregnancy story without seeing God’s story. They are both so intimately intertwined for her.
“That pregnancy saved me,” Teresa said.
He will call upon me, and I will answer him
After her baby was born, mothering was a daily choice to rely on the Lord.
“I remember one time being in my apartment when Rachel was little," Teresa recalled. “I would always say my prayers down beside my bed, and I would take my Bible, and I would put it on the bed and just put my hands on it.”
With her hands on the open Bible, Teresa poured out her heart, praying, “I don’t know how to do this, Lord. It’s just so hard. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Then she closed her Bible and reopened it. There, on the pages, Teresa found Psalm 91:14-16.
“That’s my life verse,” Teresa said.
Even during the interview with Pregnancy Help News, Teresa was excitedly mulling aloud the words of this Scripture: “Because he loves me… I will show him my salvation, because he acknowledges my name!”
The hand of God
When Rachel was a preschooler, something else happened that changed Teresa’s life forever.
Teresa was in her church’s small group class one Sunday morning. At the end of their time together, the group formed a circle, held hands, and prayed together. The prayer moved her to tears; the challenges of her life were weighing heavily. Teresa couldn’t stop the tears.
Wanting to escape before the prayer ended, everyone having seen her tears, Teresa left, searching for a quiet place to pull herself together privately. She found a dark room down the hall, slipped in, and just cried.
And then, in her crying, she heard a voice.
“Are you alright?” a young man asked. “I’ve got two shoulders here, and you can use either one.”
This man, Steve, was not planning to attend church that day. He was scheduled to go on a deep-sea fishing expedition, but, feeling like he shouldn’t go, he backed out of his plans.
That morning as Steve left his Sunday small group, he felt God telling him to turn down a different hallway, one he’d never walked before. This turn drew him right outside the door where Teresa was crying.
A year-and-a-half later, Teresa would return to that same room – unknown to her at the time, the Bride’s Room for the church – this time as a bride, preparing to walk down the aisle to marry Steve.
Steve was a godly man who loved the Lord, Teresa, and Rachel. When Steve and Teresa exchanged rings, Steve placed a ring on Rachel’s 4-year-old finger, too.
“It just has the hand of God all over it,” Teresa said.
Overwhelmed by all God has done for her – and her child – in providing a loving and godly man in their lives, Teresa sees God working in every circumstance, orchestrating good for her life.
Even now, over three decades later, Teresa is still amazed at all God has done in her life. God has given her glimpses of what He was doing to create for her the life she didn’t even think was possible.
Like the time years later when Teresa had an epiphany moment, realizing that she probably would’ve stayed with her baby’s father if God had let him stay in the country.
“What kind of life would that have been?” Teresa wondered. “God put him on the other side of the world, because he knew I wouldn’t.”
What looked at the time to be the worst thing was the space that God used to give Teresa one of her greatest gifts.
But Teresa wasn’t relying on God because she expected Him to bring her a husband.
“I was trusting Him. There was no godly husband in the picture,” she said.
Children are the best blessing ever
She expected to be a single mom like generations before her. But she would do it while relying on the Lord.
Looking back, she laughs at what she thought was her “best,” what would have been the best imaginable man for her.
Again and again, God showed her that His plans were so much better than even what Teresa imagined could be her best.
“Thank you for the blessing of this godly man for my husband,” Teresa said. “I was blessed beyond measure.”
In those early days, during the pregnancy and as a single mom, Teresa often felt discouraged and incapable, just like many women facing unplanned pregnancies.
She knows what it’s like to think you just can’t do it.
But her words to other women facing unplanned pregnancies are the same words she used to encourage herself years ago: “Yes you can. You trust God and He will bless you beyond what you can imagine. Trust in Him.”
Tweet This: One mom who faced unplanned pregnancy tells other women who may think they can't do it “Yes you can."
“Children are not disposable … [they are] the best blessing ever,” Teresa said.
“The Bible was full of women who were in situations or doing things that weren’t God-honoring at the time,” Teresa said.
The only one who can get you through is Jesus
“The Bible says if you look for Him, you will see Him. He will make Himself known to you,” Teresa said. “You have to have that faith of a mustard seed.
“I’m telling you, day one, that was the size of my faith,” she added. “Now it’s the size of a mountain because I’ve seen what He can do. I know what He can do, and my days are His.”
“You can’t do it on your own,” said Teresa. “The only One who can get you through is Jesus. If you trust in Him, you will see … the light bulb goes off and you say, ‘Jesus did that. Wow.’”
Teresa has never lost her “wow” response to God’s goodness in her life.
Teresa is careful – adamant - to make sure others don’t make her the theme of this story.
“It’s a God story,” Teresa said. “I’m not special. It is not me. It’s Jesus. I met Him on that Damascus Road and He said, ‘I got you.”
“And every single day He’s been faithful to me,” Teresa said.
“Getting pregnant with Rachel made my whole life,” she said. “What was unexpected, what was a mountain, was huge. And if it weren’t for that, I would not have salvation. I wouldn’t know Him. I wouldn’t be where I am today. I would be aimless and lost.”
Now, as she and Steve prepare to celebrate 31 years of marriage, with a grown daughter who also loves the Lord, she is still in awe of her life wrapped in God’s story.
“My husband would say to me, ‘The hand of God reached out a little further to get you because of where you were,’” Teresa said with a smile.
Godly words from a godly husband. A loving gift from a God who uses everything – including an unplanned pregnancy – to draw His people to Himself.
