My story starts as a child, a child who would have had a much different life if I would have followed God’s word as I was taught. Instead, I chose to follow temptations and went down a long windy road of heartache, loss, and consequences.
I was raised in a Christian home, growing up with parents, two brothers, grandparents, great grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins who all loved the Lord. I was taught biblical principles and knew right and wrong. I attended a Christian school until 5th grade when I was switched to the neighborhood public school.
5th grade is a tough year. It is when kids start to understand who is allegedly “cool” and who is not. I was heavy as a child and when I switched to public school I experienced bullying for the first time. I will be honest, I never really let it get to me, though I know it caused a little damage.
I still remember the one time that the bullying did bother me; it was a boy who was my 5th grade boyfriend but we had broken up. At Christmas, my Aunt had given me a Guess shirt. I was so excited to have an expensive name-brand shirt. When I wore it to school, this ex-boyfriend came up to me and said “450.” I asked what he meant, and he said “Your shirt is to guess your weight, right?” I went home, threw that shirt in the bottom of my closet and did not wear Guess again until I was older.
I remember at some point during my elementary school years that my mom had “the talk” with me. Sadly, I had already heard some about it on the bus — a kid had a book. My mom had one talk with me and never said another word about sex again until it was really too late.
As a parent myself, I think it is so important to talk to your kids about bullying, good touch and bad touch, sex, drugs, alcohol, abortion . . . and to talk to them about it a lot. I also think it is so important to be the first to talk to them about it so they can get the right impression and God’s expectations right off the bat. You want them to really understand what God says on these topics.
I also heard one purity talk at an overnight Christian camp I attended. The presenters asked people to stand who wanted to pledge to wait until marriage. I stood and took this pledge. In my heart I meant it — I wanted to wait until I was married.
Fast-forward a few years to my freshman year: I had started the process of losing weight — not on purpose. I think it was puberty and unintentional exercise. I lost a lot of weight to the point that I actually had a few people accuse me of being anorexic, but I was surely not. Boys started to take notice too, which was a new experience for me.
When I was 15, I started dating this guy. I had friends at this point in my life who had already had sex, and it was what they used to show others they cared for or loved each other. So, at 15, close to 16, I decided to show this boy I “loved” him. I put love in quotes because I realized this was not real love, this was some kind of a feeling, but I could not decipher the difference. After just a few months, we broke up.
I think, personally, when you give someone that gift of your virginity, the meaning of it diminishes in your mind. It becomes easier to give into sexual temptations. For me, I always said, “Well, I have already done it and I cannot get it back, so now at least it’s a way to show love.”
In my sophomore year, I met a nice Christian guy on a youth group retreat. He did not live that close to me so we decided we would just be friends. We would talk for hours and even got to hang out a few times, but a friendship is as far as it went.
In that same time frame on into my junior year, I met another guy who I decided to date. This boy did not come from a good home. His dad was in jail and his mom stayed at his grandma’s, which meant the house was run by the kids. There were a lot of drug (marijuana) and alcohol parties. I actually never tried a drug nor was I ever drunk, but my friends all did.
Again, I thought I was in love and decided to show it. We dated for a while, but I decided I did not love him anymore and ended the relationship. We all still hung out because our friends were all friends. He tried everything to get back together with me. I just did not feel the same way.
One night, we were hanging out and talking about old times when feelings came rushing back for him. I was going to tell him the next day that I wanted to date again. But as we talked, he got mad at me for something stupid and hung up on me. My pride told me I was not calling him back and he would have to wait until tomorrow to hear I wanted to date him again.
I went to school that day but I forgot my pager. When I got home, I had so many missed pages, including from my ex’s sister who never paged me. When I called her, she proceeded to tell me that he overdosed, was in a coma and they thought maybe hearing my voice would wake him up.
His cousin picked me up and we drove silently to the hospital. I was 17 and walked into my ex-boyfriend’s hospital room, where he was hooked up to wires everywhere and was almost a pale grayish color. I have never experienced anything like this in my life, and I actually fell to the floor because my legs could not hold me. I was overcome with pain, a pain that a 17-year-old should not have to feel.
He never regained consciousness and passed away. I was told later that he could not handle our breakup and took seven different drugs that night to end his life.
It took me a long time to deal with this. My body was so weak and stressed that I got mono and was homebound from school for most of my junior year. During this time, my mom informed me that my Christian friend who I’d met at the youth retreat took his life in the same week my boyfriend did. She told me his dad reached out to her because the boy wrote me a letter. Due to what I was dealing with, my mom did not allow his dad to send it to me and I did not know right away what had happened to my friend.
Years and other relationships went by. I lost more friends to drugs and alcohol in those years but still hung out with friends who chose to live that lifestyle.
At 21, I went to a party and met this cute boy. You see, at that time in my life, a guy just needed to be good looking and I would talk with him — who cares if he did drugs? This cute boy was a nice guy who was into cocaine. I told myself things would not get serious because he was on hard drugs and I did not approve. But I put myself in situations I should have never been in, things happened and I was late. Yup, I missed my period.
In my head, I had always thought of how I’d had sex before and had never gotten pregnant — even to the point that I sometimes wondered if I could even get pregnant. One of my friends came with me to take a test, because I did not want to do this alone. We sat in my bathroom as two pink lines showed up. I was shocked: I really did not think this would happen to me. Now I had to tell my parents that I was not a virgin and I was pregnant, not to mention that it was with someone whom I had no intention of staying with.
I told my boyfriend, and his first response was, “OK, you are going to take care of it, right?” I got so angry at him because he knew I would never have an abortion, yet he chose that as his very first words!
My first child is statistically a child who would have a death sentence due to the actions of the mother. She would be considered a “hard case” because her biological father was a drug addict. But not my girl. You see, God chose this child’s life to save mine.
My name is Vanessa, which means butterfly. It was not until that moment that my own mom realized the significance of my name. God took this broken, ugly sinner and forgave me and transformed me into something beautiful. 1 John 1:9 says “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
God changed my life and I ended the unhealthy relationship I was in. I focused on my relationship with Christ and my daughter. I continued my college education while pregnant and as a single mother, and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education.
My daughter’s biological father was still in her life and had visits which were supervised by me or my parents. I allowed his mom to supervise the visits when his father’s health was failing.
During this time, God put an amazing man who loved Him in my life. We dated but ended up breaking things off as my past was hard for him. Thankfully when my daughter was three, God worked in our hearts again and brought us back together. In 2007, we became a family and got married. He gave my daughter, Octavia, a necklace with three diamonds to symbolize our family. He vowed to be my husband but also vowed to be her dad.
When Octavia was six years old, her biological father broke our agreement and I told him he would have to have visits supervised by me from now on or get a court-mandated hair follicle drug test to have her on his own. He refused and that was the last time he saw Octavia. He tragically missed out on knowing an amazing girl because heroin took over his life.
The night before Octavia turned 13, I read a Facebook post from a friend about how our old friends never grew up and how “this guy” had overdosed, was on a ventilator and his family was going to take him off the next day, on his daughter’s birthday — my daughter’s birthday. I messaged this friend to ask if I knew this person and that’s when I learned it was my daughter’s biological father.
He somehow pulled through, but two years later, he overdosed again and heroin took his life. This was painful for me; the pain was really that my daughter had to deal with things she should never have to because of me. My sin caused someone I love more than myself the horrible pain of growing up without her biological father, and then losing him forever in this way. This still hurts me because I know, even if she does not understand it, my daughter knows what real abandonment feels like, and it is a consequence of my actions.
I am so thankful every day that God put a Godly man in her life who shows her what a real dad is. In fact, I think at times she forgets he is not her biological father.
My husband and I went on to have five more kids. My children know Octavia’s story through the sex talks we’ve had with them. Prior to learning this information from us, they had no knowledge of any difference between them and her. That is how much my husband loves her. No one can tell that he is not her biological father unless they know my story.
My story does not end there. Statistically in our society, my 6th child would also be given the death penalty. My husband and I decided that we were done after our 5th child, and that he would have a vasectomy. After abstinence, vasectomies are considered the most effective method of birth control due to their long-term success rate of over 99%. We followed all the rules and my husband got the all clear 0-sperm count.
Almost two years later, I was having some gynecological issues. I made a doctor appointment for the next day, but decided I should take a pregnancy test just so I could go into my appointment saying I took it and it was negative. To my husband and my surprise, we saw two pink lines . . . pregnant again.
All children come from God, but this child was even more of an example of His power. My husband was tested and told he had 5 sperm and one of them gave us our little girl. Our daughter is the 0.1%-0.3% chance. That percentage actually drops with how extremely low his count was. His doctor told us if we came in for help getting pregnant with those numbers he would advise us to adopt because basically there would be no chance.
She is a miracle, but I know couples for whom she would be an unwanted miracle because they took precautions and abortion would “fix it.” Gloria shows us God’s glory and we are so thankful for her! “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17
BIO: Vanessa Smith is a wife and stay at home mom of 6, now a blogger for Save The 1. She graduated from Temple University with a bachelor’s degree in education. She prays that God would use her story for others to see His grace and mercy.
