I remember being a teenager. Horrible years those were- adolescence. I remember spending the first 14 years of my life being taunted and teased for being overweight, processing through my parents recent divorce and desperately searching for love and acceptance. I remember the first day I stepped foot onto my High School campus. I was so nervous. I remember looking across the quad at the thousands of students that surrounded me. Unknown faces, unknown names, unknown lives. And me. No one knew me, no one knew the real me. Unfortunately, that statement remained true for many of my colleagues from freshman year through graduation day. For years, I personally remained afraid to let anyone see the real me. I guess I was afraid of the rejection. And then, when i’d determine to give it a shot, put myself out there and allow people to see me for who I truly was, I realized I had hidden that girl deep deep down for far too long and I didn’t even know who the real me was anymore. Fear paralyzes. Fear paralyzed them and it paralyzed me, from allowing the world to see us for who we truly were. Broken.

I had this friend in High School. She was pretty wild. Like the rest of us, she was just trying to make sense of the hand life had dealt her and as a result began searching. Looking back, I understand how instrumental those adolescent years are to the development of our future person. It is in those years that we begin to question and search and explore truth. But sometimes in our search, we enter into dark and tethered territory. As was true for my friend.

My friend met a boy and they fell in love {as in love as you can be at 15}. They began to follow the systematic progression of events and expression of “love” as was common to the every day High Schooler and found themselves entering into a premature sexual relationship. After that, everything changed. She changed. The guilt and the shame overwhelmed her and pushed down her identity farther and deeper into this figurative room she held inside her soul. She locked that door and refused to open it to anyone…for years.

I remember the day she shared with me her secret. Our lunch table became like a confessional and I became like her priest. I remember entering into her story as if it were my own. Through tear drenched eyes and fear stricken words, she told me how she had missed her period that month. First it was 3 days…then 7 days…then finally 20 days late. She told me about how she would sit in the bathroom and sob, praying to a God that she knew little of. She told me about the vows she made in the bathroom. Vows to serve Christ if He would save her. Save her from motherhood…save her from herself. Vows to put an end to the demons in her life that were holding her hostage. Her vows were made in belief that she could have a different life, a better life, a life that included God and excluded her lifestyle of sin. I listened intently, clenching onto the cold blue picnic table as I waited for her to reveal the final outcome. Did her vow save her? Was she sitting before me, pregnant? Did God hear her prayer? She took a deep breath, looked up from the ground, paused, and said,       “God heard me.”

I find myself thinking back to this story, to my friends story, often. In this season of my life, I too have found myself making vows from the bathroom. It might sound silly to some of you, but that bathroom has become both like a silent torturous enemy as well as my place of hope and refuge all in one. It is there that I regretfully face the monthly reminder that my dreams of carrying a child will have to wait, again. It is there that I have cried out in pain and longing from the deepest parts of my soul. It is there that I have questioned. Questioned God, questioned His love and His plan. It is there. However, it is also there that I have received peace. An unexplainable, beautiful peace that never seems to make a lick of sense. How is it possible to have peace in the midst of pain? It is there through blood shot eyes and pregnancy test in hand that I have vowed to continue to place my hope in Christ anyway. It is there that I have vowed to trust Him. It is there that I have vowed to acknowledge that although His plan is not my preference, it is good. His plans for me, for my marriage and for my future family are good.

Maybe you too have made vows from the bathroom. Vows that no one has ever heard muttered from your lips. I assure you, God has heard every word. Whether  your vows were answered tangibly or in a still small voice stating, “wait”, God has heard you. To the one who has lost a child and your vows would seem to have been forgotten, to the one who might have aborted a child and your vows are filled with shame and regret, take heart, God has heard you. And now, years later, that broken teenage girl still finds her hope in Christ, the same Savior who responded to her cry is the same one who lifts me up even still- different vows, different bathroom, same girl–

God heard me.