Day 29: Life is Worth It

The beginning of this week was marked with Sanctity of Life Sunday. So, throughout the week there have been different things that I've seen on the cause for the rights of the unborn.

One post by a blogger stood out to me, and I'm so glad that she shared what she did.You can read the original blog post here. (Seriously, please do!) Vivian relinquished her baby girl at seventeen years old, and she shares candidly what that was like on Carolyn McCulley's blog Radical Womanhood.  I am so thankful for birth mothers who are willing to share their experience. They are women of courage and great depth. They deserve respect and honor. As an adopted child and one who hopes to adopt, this testimony of hers is beautiful. She writes:

I am asked often enough, “Wasn’t it hard?” “Didn’t it hurt?” and other questions of that sort. It was desperately hard and terribly painful. I still cannot talk about the day I left my daughter in the hospital. Even now my heart is wrenched just writing this twenty-six years later. It was excruciating. That moment was the worst moment I’ve ever experienced, which is why I don’t speak about it. It’s too full of pain.


Yes, giving up a child for adoption is painful and hard.


But I believe those questions—the hurt and the pain questions—are the wrong questions. Obviously, giving your child up to another woman to raise as her own is painful and hard. God designed us to, generally, love our children. I did love my daughter. Very deeply. I still do.


The questions that a girl or woman needs to ask of herself and have asked of her are about value and worth. Is this child, this pregnancy, worth anything? Is going through a pregnancy and delivering a baby you do not mean to keep and then giving that child to another woman worth it?


I had to answer those questions. If I hadn’t answered those questions, I couldn’t have given up my child. Even at seventeen I had to wade through the swamp of worth, life, convenience, pain. I had to do the hard calculations of life. Was this thing I was going to do worth it in the end?

In the end, all considerations came back to my daughter’s life. I needed to answer questions about her, not me. Was her life, just her life, important? What was her life worth? Was her life worth more than mine? Worth my time? Worth suffering for? Worth anything? Did her life matter?

As I consider the gift that I have been given by being an adopted child, I haven't the words to explain the depth of my appreciation nor the emotions within my heart to know what it means that to one woman I was worth it.