Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Conclusion
Story One… Joseph Courtney
I was seventeen when I met Javon (Jay). He was so cute! Ripped haha. I was tall and thin, dark hair, and pretty. I was one of those teenagers that had to learn by experience, insecure most of my teenage years, with amazing potential I just didn’t understand. At fourteen, my mom was embarrassed because I wasn’t hanging around with the kids going to church and announced one day, I’m sure with good intentions, “Since you’re going to hang around that crowd then you aren’t going to church anymore”. It didn’t seem like a punishment to me. What my mother may not have understood was that I was having so much trouble trying to fit in somewhere. I tried hanging around with a couple of cool girls in the neighborhood. They were mean girls. I tried hanging around the good girls in the ward. Why did they seem boring? But, there were a couple of girls who were nice to me and fun. Why did they always have to get me in trouble?
Eventually, I stopped feeling out of place with a group of kids skipping school. Unfortunately, I started doing all the things those kids were doing trying to fill up our day without school. I remember being sent to the counselor’s office numerous times to help solve the issue of why I was skipping school.
Oh ya… the love of my seventeen year old life haha. Jay’s family wasn’t LDS. His family was so accepting of me and all my non-LDS habits. I’d sit at the table and talk with his mom, his sisters and even his little brother. It felt like home. Secure, a place where no one judged me, they loved me. Let’s move to the part where I get pregnant haha. That’s it, I end up pregnant. I was working at Coryelle Answering Service in Ogden at the time. I remember going to work and shoving my growing belly into the same pants day after day. It was getting harder. One of my co-workers made a funny comment one day that my baby was going to be born with a zipper mark on it’s forehead.
I could NEVER tell my parents. They would disown me. I know this seems ridiculous to you mothers as it does to me now. But I really thought I could NEVER tell my mother. I WOULD NEVER tell my mother. I believed she would never want anything to do with me again. I didn’t have any other plan, no thought for the future, just today, or ever, I could not tell my mother. God knew my heart. He knew of my true resolve to not tell my mother and he knew I would need her help. He knew what lay ahead of me and what my pregnancy was going to be like. One day, when I was about four and a half months pregnant, my mother came to me… She said, “I had a dream that you were pregnant” and I started crying.
My parents did NOT respond how I had expected them to. They responded with love. It wasn’t a wonderful amazing adventure. It’s not by any means a recommendation to get pregnant haha. But, it is a recommendation to trust that your parents love you and that they will no matter what mistakes you make. They may not respond in the best way immediately. But, time helps and you are loved and life continues and your trials can bring experiences that will change you for the better forever if you look up to heaven and trust the most high parent whose love is greater than we understand.
My mom scheduled an appointment for me to see a doctor, Dr. Craig Hurst. He was young and I remember he wore Jordache jeans 8). I’m not sure if Jay was at my first doctor appointment. I think he was. But, mostly I remember the ultrasound screen. The black screen with the grey/white outline. The wand running across my belly and the screen dancing around on the baby’s outline. I remember him saying, “Do you want to know what you’re having?” I said “Yes” and he said with a smile, “It’s a boy”. A flash of content and then the doctor’s face. He was concentrating now… Driving the wand back and forth, snapping measurements. He didn’t need to speak. I didn’t want him to speak. My eyes were locked on his face. His face locked on the screen.
Faith Building Experiences 