TW: Talking about religion, abortion, and Satan.
Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous but I am serious here. My family, and maybe even our world, depends on it. My parents have always been deeply religious, my dad especially so. He would pray at Church, with the family, and even late into the night, by himself, over whatever was troubling him. I used to have insomnia as a kid and would sometimes join him in the late night prayers. I always felt closer to my father and to God after those nights. What I’m saying is, he isn’t exactly the Satan type.
Things changed nearly three months ago when I found out I am pregnant. My dad is not happy. Mom and him found out two months ago and since then he has been like a completely different man.
The reason I didn’t tell them right away wasn’t because I thought they would turn around and ask me to end my pregnancy. They have always been pro life, that wasn’t an issue. But I thought they would be worried and have some questions, so I tried to prepare a bit before telling them about it, to make sure they would be at ease and realize I am mature enough to take responsibility. I also gave it a bit of time just in case it was a false positive. After all, I haven’t ever got pregnant before, and I am a clean girl, always wash down you-know-where, especially when it is very messy, like in the mornings and during my cycle, so I thought maybe it was just a broken test (it was one of mom’s and she hasn’t been pregnant since me, so I think it’s pretty old) or a missed cycle (I have been a bit irregular lately, even though it used to be like clockwork before).
So I waited, planned my speech, and made sure I tested again before telling them.
Mom was over the moon, really excited. She has been supportive the whole time, working out baby names, buying things for the baby, choosing wallpapers to turn my old playroom into a nursery. She takes me to all my appointments and makes sure to fill my pillbox with my vitamins too. She would have done that anyway, seeing as she is the one who handles all my medical stuff, especially the down you-know-where business, which she says is “not decent for a man to handle”. I’m only mentioning this cause of how normally she handled everything, like it was just another little change in life she could adapt to. Basically she took it in stride.
Dad was completely different. He didn’t say anything at first, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. Like, he LITERALLY didn’t say anything. For days, he communicated mostly in one word answers and didn’t seem to acknowledge anything to do with the baby. Mom said he was in shock, that’s all. That such a great blessing takes anyone by surprise.
After a week of basically ignoring mum and I like we didn’t exist any more, he asked me to come downstairs and pray with him at night like when I was little. We did this every night for a bit. This should have been positive, but something felt wrong. He didn’t hug me or hold me like he used to, it was like he was allergic to contact with me. During these times he started talking to me about how it was going to be hard to raise a kid without a father. I found that ridiculous, and reminded him I had my parents and God to guide me through all my life, like he had always said.
He started talking about other things, like how it would affect my studies, job prospects, finances, and my health. He talked about postpartum depression, bleeding out, all the scary stuff. And of course I was scared. Not only am I a first time mom, but my father, who has always guided and protected me, was using his “fires of hell” voice and going into gory detail about the horrors of childbirth. He even described how some women get so hurt down there it can never work again.
When I told my mom what he was saying to me, she confronted him. He insisted he was just trying to make sure I was prepared, not trying to make me scared. Mom gave him the benefit of the doubt, but told him to stop because it was stressing me and that could hurt the baby.
He stopped for like, two days max. After that was when he first suggested an abortion outright.
Like I said, he has always been VERY pro life, so this shocked me. At first I guess I had assumed he meant signing over the baby to mom and him, or adoption. But looking back, he was clearly angling at abortion all along. I wish I had told my mom, but it was too much of a shock he even suggested it, and I could still remember them fighting about the pregnancy two days prior, and the silence that followed. I didn’t want to ruin my parents’ marriage over my dad saying something silly in a panic.
He kept suggesting it for a while, too. He seemed uncomfortable with it, always avoiding talking about it when mom was in earshot, but really insisting whenever we would talk alone.
He even came up with a plan. Even more sin, lies and deceit. He wanted to say it was a regular trip out, we would get it done, and pass it off as a miscarriage to my mom. In the end, the only way to make him stop telling me to abort was to threaten to tell mom what he had said.
After that it felt a bit like things were going back to normal. He stopped suggesting it, and him and my mom had fewer fights at night. I hadn’t realized how much sleep I had lost to their fighting until it wasn’t happening any more. Like I said before, I used to have insomnia and actually needed medication to sleep as a kid, but about a year ago I got ill and had to be taken off everything. Even after I was better, my mom didn’t go back to filling my prescriptions because it seemed literally everything had cleared up after that illness: no more acne, no more allergies, and all it took for me to fall asleep was a cup of camomile tea they would bring to me before bed. Lucky, too, I can’t imagine what all that stuff would have done to the baby!
Well, when the fighting started the camomile tea just didn’t cut it. Or maybe I suck at making tea. But basically what I’m saying is their fights were getting so loud that I couldn’t sleep at all and I was wondering if I had any old sleep pills and if it was even safe to have them when carrying a child. And when the fights stopped, the sleep I got was pure bliss. So deep and relaxing.
With them not fighting, me sleeping, and the baby doing great, I thought all that was behind us now. I thought dad had accepted I was keeping my baby. We could go back to being a family again.
Which brings us to last night. I was struggling to sleep a little from the fluttering inside me, so I figured why not go downstairs and pray for the health of the baby, and maybe for my restful sleep to continue? I went downstairs quietly to not wake my parents. I got to the wall under the cross where we usually pray, and was a little bit surprised to see dad there at that time of night. I thought about leaving or making my presence known, but a small part of me wanted to see what he was praying for. Maybe I could join him, just like old times.
All he was saying, over and over, was “I am sorry”, “I won’t do it again”, and “just help me make it right”. “I am sorry, I won’t do it again, just help me make it right. I am sorry, I won’t do it again, just help me make it right. I am sorry…” like a chant.
I was excited and happy and relieved at first. I really did think he was repenting for trying to push me to commit irredeemable sin by aborting my child, lying to my mother, and pulling our family apart. And clearly I couldn’t sleep because God had heard his prayer and He sent me to bear witness to my dad’s repentance. I could forgive him, and our family would finally be whole again.
I must have made a sound, because he saw me and stood up. He looked so tired, like he hadn’t slept all night, or all week. He sort of smiled at me. He knew I had been sent by the Lord to acknowledge him and forgive him.
“I forgive you, and I know God does too,” I said.
He seemed so happy and relieved. We hugged.
“It isn’t too late to end this all,” he whispered into my hair as he held me close.
Instinctively, I pushed him back. I just couldn’t believe he was still sticking to this? What was the apology even for? That’s not how prayer works. You can’t apologise for something and keep doing it. You can’t repent for a sin you intend on committing. He always told me that.
Now, I know I shouldn’t have done this next bit, but cut me some slack. I am pregnant, tired, and at my wit’s end about how unsupportive my father is, to the point of turning against God and asking me to do the same.
So I said, making sure I was loud enough to wake mom, basically shouting: “No, dad, stop asking me to do this. It is unfair and wrong. This is my baby and I am keeping it. I will not kill my child. That’s a sin, like you know.”
Of course, my mom woke up and clearly heard enough of it to come storming downstairs. She hugged me tight and sent me to my room. From up there, I lay in bed, listening to her and dad shout about me. I picked out parts of it.
Mom was telling him how I was chosen, that this was a virgin birth, that whatever he was praying to that wanted me to abort, it was not our God.
Dad was telling her that I was too young, my body would suffer, and that there was no way it could be a virgin birth, I was just a whore.
The second he called me that, mom shouted at him to get out. No more shouting after that. After a bit of shuffling noises and a slamming door, mom came upstairs to talk to me.
I asked her about a virgin and a whore, both words I knew from the Bible but didn’t see how they applied to me. I wasn’t Mary, and I definitely wasn’t going against God’s will or harming our village and family. So mom explained that a virgin birth is when a woman who is very pure and good and clean is chosen by God to carry His child, and that a whore was the opposite, an unclean and wicked woman. She said she knew I wasn’t unclean or wicked, she kept good tabs on me after all. So that meant I had been chosen as a pure vessel to carry our Lord the second time.
This made me even more confused about dad’s behaviour. He knows just as well as mom does that I am good and clean and pray often and never go anywhere without their permission and supervision. I do my best not to lie or hurt anyone. In fact, his recent behaviour has taken me further from God than I had ever been in my life. So, knowing how good and Godly I am, why wouldn’t he believe that my child could be our Lord?
Mom said that evil tries to work its way into the most virtuous of people during the hardest times. That Satan is telling my dad to make me get an abortion so Jesus cannot be born again and save the world. She says we have to stay strong and make sure to drive the evil out of him. That makes sense to me.
But it’s enough work for me to be taking care of my own immortal soul, not to mention carrying the Second Coming. I can hardly even decide what colour stationary to buy, and somehow I am supposed to have the judgement and strength to fight Satan and bring Jesus back into the world? Of course, Mary did it at my age, but I am worried I am not good enough. Mom said through faith all is possible… but doesn’t this doubt mean my faith is lacking? Is this the effect of Satan in our household? Is my baby safe?
It feels like the best place to begin pushing Satan out is helping my dad see the light. If he is fighting Satan too, it will be three of us, which is better than two. Mom says she will handle it mostly, but I really want to do my part. If dad has been fighting Satan this whole time, he needs as much support as possible.
So, how do I help my dad reject Satan and accept that Jesus is about to return, without putting my health and soul in danger?