A full-time student and part-time waitress, pressured to abort her son by her fiancé, chose life for her child despite being left alone, pregnant, and afraid. Having made the right decision, she not only found crucial support at a pregnancy resource center but eventually turned to God and had her life transformed.
Thanks to PRC and Faith’s conviction, she gave birth to her baby boy, Noah, on her birthday: Aug. 4, 2017.
“The Lord had saved my baby, and so I named him Noah,” she told The Epoch Times.
An Ultimatum
“We met online,” Faith said of her fiancé. “We went on a date very quickly. Our relationship escalated to, ‘Okay, we’re gonna get married.’ I was 21 ... he was 20.”At the beginning of November 2016, Faith’s fiancé went back to North Carolina, where he was working at the time, while she stayed in Missouri. They had planned to marry in January 2017. But just weeks after he left, Faith discovered she was pregnant.
“It was like suddenly, everything had changed,” she said. “I called him ... his voice kind of fell flat. That tipped me off that something wasn’t quite right ... shortly after that, he started telling me to get the abortion.”
Yet, walking into PRC, Faith found the support she needed from Jane and Joe, whose faith-based resource center for pregnant women gave her the conviction she needed to choose life for her baby.
“I ended up telling him if he truly expected me to abort our baby I don’t think I could marry him.”
Faith didn’t have the finances to provide for her child. Nor did she have the support of her family, whom she described as pro-life Christians but with a punitive bent.
“There are like two types of pro-life people,” Faith said. “There’s pro-life people that are pro-good life, creating healthy lives for children. And then there’s pro-life people that are like, ‘This is your punishment now you have to live with it.’ And my family tends to be more like on the [negative] spectrum.”
“I was like, ‘I don’t have to do either of those,’” she said. “[My fiancé] also threatened that if I kept the baby, he would get custody, trying to scare me.”
Faith knew her fiancé was in another state, and there was another woman. The decision to keep her baby meant the wedding was off. She was alone.
A Vivid Pregnancy Dream
When a room became available at a maternity home now owned by PRC and known as Bridges, she left the room she was renting with her brother and moved in. Through PRC’s “My Ridiculously Amazing Life” program, Faith was able to continue her studies at Salem College of Cosmetology and create healthy boundaries with her family and the birth father’s family, whom she kept informed of her baby’s progress.On Faith’s birthday, her water broke.
“I called a friend to come take me to the hospital and I also called Jane ... it was the middle of the night,” she recalled. “I gave birth, and it was okay.”
Faith had had a vivid dream about saving a baby from a flood long before meeting her fiancé or becoming pregnant and this dream had always stayed with her.
“I had cried out to Noah to save the baby with his ark, and my pregnancy felt very much like that,” Faith said. “It felt like I was saving a baby from a flood.”
Faith had begun attending church while pregnant and was inspired by the way PRC was run. “They did things without wanting anything in return ... it was a very new kind of Christian for me. I think in seeking the Lord I ended up giving my life to Christ during my pregnancy,” she said.
A Happy Ending
Faith had also met someone special while dining with Jane and Joe at their home; their son, Gabriel, a PRC volunteer who had helped carry her bags on the day she moved in. After Noah’s birth, when Gabriel had returned to Missouri from a work placement, there was a spark between them.“I just couldn’t help but notice how helpful he was with Noah,” Faith said. “I saw that as the miraculous moment; I was like, ‘Is he being paternal to my child?’ He had these Christian values instilled in him, he took this so naturally that I became very attracted.”
Faith prayed and asked her priest for advice, eventually approaching Jane and Joe for permission to get to know their son. They gave their blessing. Faith and Gabriel had their first official date in January 2020.
“We saw each other like, every day,” Faith said. “It was pretty obvious that we were both seeking marriage and lifelong commitment.”
Gabriel proposed in April 2020, and the couple married in Rolla two months later, on June 27.
Faith had earned her cosmetology license just one month after giving birth to Noah and eventually started her own business. But after being invited to speak to lawmakers at Heartbeat International’s “Babies Go to Congress” in Washington DC in January 2019, Faith found she had a passion for advocacy. She began working at PRC helping women like herself navigate their options.
Faith and Gabriel have since welcomed a daughter, Mary Jane, who was, incredibly, also born on Faith’s birthday. And the couple is now expecting their third child.
“Mary is the mother of God, and Jane my mother-in-law,” said Faith, reflecting, “[Women in] circumstances similar to mine that are considering abortion, I would say you’re already a mother; the choices that you make for your baby, even now, will determine what kind of mother you will be.”
