(We rejoin Ravyn, who asked to share her journey with us.  In the first installment (click here), she and her nineteen-year old boyfriend decided to marry and do what it took to bring their child into the world.  Pregnancy radically changed Ravyn, a “horrible person” as she has described herself, into a young woman finding strength and determination.  But her teen husband has not been growing with her.  In this installment she describes a very rough patch for anyone, let alone one so young and without resources or family support. And though this installment is filled with despair, we have a preview of what it is to come. The boy and girl who created a new life are becoming a man and woman building a family.  Please return for Ravyn’s final trimester installment.)

How much pressure and disappointment and let-down can a person experience without falling to their knees in tears? How much can one fight for their love when there is so little love to fight for? I couldn’t keep going without my God to help me…I wouldn’t have been able to survive this second trimester without His guiding hand.

My baby is growing. Soon we would find out the gender and whether my child is healthy. Why was I so unhappy? I worked myself to the point of crying in pain most of the time; my feet, ankles, back, and head, seemed to be my enemies. At the end of the day, coming back from working to support us, who did I have waiting for me? No one…no one who wouldn’t frown and sigh when I asked for a back massage. This was when people started to tell me, “He won’t change.” “He isn’t gonna try.” “He isn’t ready for this”, “He’s just not gonna do it…” not even “For the baby.”

It kept hitting harder and harder with every word they spoke. They were right.  The husband I loved wasn’t ever going to change. Not now when change in him was what I really needed. I prayed for help and watched for the slightest reason to be optimistic. I shouted at him like a fool when I got exasperated and I was too hurt to think. His actions were killing me.

Between the fighting and the silence there was nothing. There is nothing when the other person isn’t willing to fight. Not for himself. Not for us.

Twenty weeks “with child” and I got so excited. I had made it to the halfway point…and I got nothing out of him. I was truly alone in this. There was no excitement or real joy on his part. He was soaked in fear and rejection of the responsibility he wasn’t prepared to take on. We grew distant. I worked more, prayed more, I wished and hoped he would just see how much I needed him. I tried to have conversations, all the while feeling the child move inside me, feeling my baby grow stronger.

But no matter how many talks…there was no change, even after he said he would make an effort. The ultrasound for our baby’s gender rolled around, and he sat through the appointment on his phone playing games, and my heart turned cold. He got a job for two days a week and quit looking for anything more that could possibly help. He then lost his little job and I covered that month’s rent with help from our church. I talked to him about it, our uncle talked to him, his step-mom, friends, family…no one seemed to get through to him. It was about him, the games, not us. Not our family. I was watching the one person I really wanted fade away because of this child inside me.

School started and he did so well. He completed the courses on time and I got hopeful, I prayed as my child started to be able to be felt by others when they placed their hand on my belly. My miracle was really going to happen when this child was born. But thoughts circled me throughout everything. What if this baby was better with someone else? With no real help, I can’t possibly cover the costs of this new life and all it needs to thrive and be whole. I begged my Father to help me. To be softer and more loving so I could help my husband find the right path. Where is it all going? What lies ahead now frightens me when at the beginning, with the joyous news of the life inside me, all I felt was hope and excitement and confidence that we…we, the two of us together, helping each other…could be the kind of people our child needed us to be.

Just memories now. Only a few months have passed but those bright days seem so long ago.

All these emotions and feelings, the physical and mental realities that seem so much larger than me, a seventeen-year old without a high school diploma facing this blessing that is such a challenge, feeling so alone. I need calmness and there is only frenzy and worry. I need a sense of some sort of control and all I see is the world slipping away from me.

I keep trying to return to the arms of my God. I know he is the only one who can truly help me through this.

Ravyn

Ravyn is a young woman from Irondale, Washington. We are not publishing her legal name, but the name by which she is known to her community.