Natty's Pond (eBook)

Finding hope and forgiveness after a medically advised abortion

Jenny Foster (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
246 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-1620-3 (ISBN)

'Natty's Pond' is a true first-person account of the abortion of a wanted pregnancy within the context of marriage. This story details the experience of a second trimester surgical abortion that was deemed 'medically advisable' due to poor fetal prognosis. The author shares a tragic story of a medical whirlwind that left no option other than what doctors called 'the compassionate choice' to terminate the life of her unborn son. The consequences that followed this horrific decision were unexpected, grave, and altered the course of the author's life and health for the next twenty years.

"e;Natty's Pond"e; is a true first-person account of the abortion of a wanted pregnancy within the context of marriage. This story details the experience of a second trimester surgical abortion that was deemed "e;medically advisable"e; due to poor fetal prognosis. The author shares a tragic story of a medical whirlwind that left no option other than what doctors called "e;the compassionate choice"e; to terminate the life of her unborn son. The consequences that followed this horrific decision were unexpected, grave, and altered the course of the author's life and health for the next twenty years. This book is not a message of condemnation. This memoir argues that abortion is life altering and can result in secrecy, silence, shame, and a myriad of symptoms which protract grief and contribute to isolation. These painful consequences can be magnified within the faith community, leaving many mothers and parents of the unborn trying to deal with unanticipated physical symptoms, the emotional and behavioral entanglements of anxiety, depression, and PTSD, as well as very real spiritual roadblocks. Healing is possible when courage meets honesty, forging connection with others, opening the heart to repentance, and to the unmerited grace of the cross. With the unconditional love of an Almighty God abortion survivors can be forgiven, and ultimately CAN forgive themselves. Through the mercy of Christ, twenty years later the author finds herself profoundly changed on the topic of abortion. This story was shared with hopes to help others lead with love and greater compassion toward the countless mothers who lost a child and survived it.

CHAPTER 2 :

INNOCENCE LOST

(1984)

There was a particular toy I kept carefully put away in the corner of the tall, white, over-the-desk bookshelf in my childhood bedroom. I waited a long time to get it. I was embarrassed that I liked baby dolls until the end of my twelfth year, and I didn’t get the memo that playing with dolls wasn’t cool until it was a little too late. I was in seventh grade—junior high, middle school, and almost a teenager. Though age-appropriately self-conscious about other things, like what I wore or the style of my hair, I didn’t care about being teased by a few friends on occasion for this. I had seen the piles of stuffed animals and a few dolls in the closets of their more mature bedrooms. My love of playing with dolls, at least in the privacy of my room, still outweighed the fear of losing my status as a popular kid.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized my love for dolls had everything to do with being an only child. I liked stuffed animals and 1980s classics like Rubik’s Cubes and multi-colored Slinkies too, but I only liked dolls that looked realistic, the kind you could diaper and pretend were real babies. I never wanted a collectible doll in a box or Barbies who were not easily wrapped in a blanket and fed a life-sized bottle. When I was young, my dolls were often an imaginary baby brother or sister. I didn’t have a sibling of my own, so I had to improvise.

I attended Catholic school in the 1970s and 80s, which at that time meant that all of my friends but one came from large families. Until I was old enough to figure out a few things, I was confused about why I was the only kid in my family. In my house you could hear a pin drop on any day at any time, and I spent every possible opportunity at my friends’ houses, loving the intimate chaos found around their dinner tables. There were food fights and other disputes that broke out between siblings. If I wasn’t at Meegan’s, Ellie’s, Susan’s, Beth’s, or Maggie’s house, my ever-patient mom was hosting a slumber party at our house with enough girls to form a basketball team.

My favorite toy with its place of honor at the top of my shelf, I’m ashamed to say, was a Cabbage Patch Kid. The coveted and costly doll of the 1980s led many desperate parents to wait in long lines at Christmas, entering bidding wars to lay claim to a Cabbage Patch doll for their child. Purported to be “one of a kind,” named, registered, and certified, mine came with a bald head that smelled like baby powder. My friend Maggie got hers at the same time, and we played with them in spite of the coming shadow of puberty. For me, the hidden hallmark of being a “tweener” was wildly incongruent, made up of equal time spent with doll babies and chasing boys.

In 1984 I needed a stern older sister to counsel the self-conscious twelve-year-old me— someone to tell me to go to my room and play earnestly with the toys of my childhood, because boys could definitely wait a few years. I doubt it would have worked, because being one of the popular girls came with an extra layer of social opportunities. I felt unspoken pressure to be part of the trendsetting pack, and the attention of a certain boy who was the school ringleader lured me from the safety of my childhood room. It wasn’t long before my Cabbage Patch Kid—the last of my dolls—was relegated to the top shelf of my closet, and the quest for blue eye shadow and pink hair gel eagerly began.

I was sure the butterflies in my stomach meant that I really liked our class leader, Chet, and there was a daily tidal wave of giggling support from my girlfriends to accept this boy’s every invitation. On the dodgeball field at recess, he sat by me any chance he could get, and he let me cut in line on Thursday hot dog days. In class he passed me intricately folded notes through mutual friends, and before I knew it, Chet and his posse of pimple-faced teen boys were walking me home from school.

One Saturday, my friends were over at my house in the late afternoon for a slumber party when we heard a clicking sound at my bedroom window. Meegan peeked out from behind the crisp, white JCPenney’s curtains to see him pop up from behind the pink camellia bushes. Chet furiously motioned to her to open the window. He was terrified my dad would spot him nosing around the house. Meegan cracked the window and whispered, “You’ve gotta get out of here!”

His sales pitch back to her was something like, “Her dad won’t notice if the rest of you stay here.”

Meegan quietly slid the aluminum window closed on its track but wasn’t quiet about exclaiming, “He wants you to go for a walk with him!”

Hysterics began amidst my gaggle of girls as they leapt to my dresser to turn on my curling iron and locate my oversized red can of aerosol hair spray. I was so nervous I kept blinking as Beth tried to put mascara on me, leaving something that resembled a Rorschach ink blot smeared across my nose. We snuck downstairs to the basement laundry room and acted like we were on an innocent mission to hang out in the backyard. Within minutes, Ellie had formed a plan, and I was slipping out the back gate by the giant pine tree.

The journey up the street and around the corner felt like one of the longest walks of my life. I hoped I’d correctly understood Meegan’s instructions about where to meet Chet. I was excited but dreading our meeting at the same time. I wished my parents were out of town, and I was terrified that an acquaintance would wave to me or, worse yet, a nosy neighbor might call my parents if they saw me with a boy. Head down, I watched the sidewalk closely, afraid to accidentally trip, because if Chet saw me stumble, I was sure I’d have to move to another city. I heard the sound of rubber on concrete, and I looked up to see him sliding to a stop on his BMX bike behind a large hedge in the driveway just ahead of me. I was unimpressed by his rubber-burning performance. I walked a little slower to the driveway to find him propping up his bike between an unknown neighbor’s garage door and a brick planter. Loitering in someone’s driveway seemed a completely normal place for two awkward kids to navigate their first solo conversation.

I tried to act cool, but my stomach betrayed me with wriggling knots that felt more like bats than butterflies. We didn’t talk about anything of substance, and I felt lightheaded from the smell of his Pert Plus shampoo, sweat, and Colgate toothpaste. We stalled awkwardly for a few minutes, but I told him I had to get back or my dad would kill me. Chet quickly put his arm over my shoulder and with the finesse of a much older boy, he kissed me quick and hard on the lips. I knew what to do because I’d studied the kissing scenes in teen movies with keen focus. I heard a car door slam, but before I could push him away in fear of being found out, there was a tongue in my mouth. I pulled away involuntarily and said I had to go. I heard his bike pedals catch a gear, but I didn’t look back. The walk home was much faster because I was practically running. I felt like I was going to be sick. I willed myself not to swallow because I was so grossed out thinking that his saliva was in my mouth. I wanted nothing more than to get to the seclusion of the house and brush my teeth.

I could see Beth up ahead, peeking out the front door of my house to see if I was coming down the street yet, and when she saw me, three other inquiring faces joined her. I ran up the front walkway, and thankfully they quickly folded my wobbly-kneed form into the house.

“I can’t talk. I HAVE to brush my teeth! I’m so grossed out.”

Seventh grade began with all the imaginable adrenalin and antiperspirant befitting a pre-teen parade. If there was any chance that our gaggle of girls could see Chet and his clan of followers, we took it. Puberty arrived in full swing that year for all of us, and by now my friends had crushes on some of the other boys, but their relationships had not yet progressed to kissing. Unfortunately, my friendship and other confusing feelings for Chet grew, and that first nauseating kiss progressed to full-scale making out over the next month of after-school walks and secret encounters.

By the fall of 8 grade, we weren’t just kissing in the back row of movie theatres; we were making it just about all the way around the bases every time we saw each other. Things continued heating up, and because his parents both worked, we had far too much unsupervised time. Close to my fourteenth birthday, Chet kept saying, “I know what we should do for your birthday.” Whenever he’d bring up sex in a roundabout way, I felt equally terrified and excited. Few of my friends had done anything much but an awkward peck or handholding with their crushes, which seemed about the right speed, but he and I were somehow the unspoken leaders of the junior high sexuality movement. I didn’t question how far ahead we were of others because we were certain we were in love. So many things about our time together at school, walking home, going to school dances, setting new trends in our class, and the creative love letters he wrote with intricate cartoons and sketches made me feel important, visible, and loved.

Chet spent weeks planning it out, and I just floated along with the excitement of it all. Barely fifteen himself, he had already done this with another girl two years prior. His skills at kissing and other smooth...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	17.11.2021
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-6678-1620-9 / 1667816209
ISBN-13	978-1-6678-1620-3 / 9781667816203

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