I rolled over and sighed. Dillan was crying, again. He had a fever. I had already woken up four times that night and was utterly exhausted. I crawled over my bed and pick him up from his crib. I held him close and fed him. God? I'm sorry… I started crying. I'm tired… I don't want to do this anymore. I can't handle this on my own. I know. Lately I've been, well, avoiding you, and not listening to you and then I come crawling back when things go bad, but I'm sorry. I am such a hypocrite. I'm really sorry this time…Please, I'm begging you, forgive me. I need Your strength and determination. I'm sorry for what I did with Erik the other day and I'm sorry for not spending that much time with you. As if my prayers had been answered, Dillan stopped crying and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep. Thank you. I took a deep breath. Thank you for always being faithful, and forgiving me time and time again. I laid him down gently in his crib and fell fast asleep.

Only for two and half hours though…. In the morning I gave him some medicine the doctor prescribed again and to save time and effort, I brought him into the shower with me. Mrs. Lavoie told me that this helped him not to be afraid of water when he would be older so I encouraged this as much as possible. I was determined to get him involved in any after school programs as possible because I knew that if I had only had more stuff to do, I might not have ended up the way I was.

It was strange. I looked down at him sometimes and saw that he did look a lot like me, but every once in a while I would see a flicker of Alex in him. He had my hair and his eyes. I was worried about him growing up without a father though. Who would want to marry a woman with a child? Biko would and did. I missed him so much. As soon as I got out of the shower, I headed for the phone and my mom answered. For some reason I was surprised to hear her voice. She was my mother... For months, now, I had been the mother of someone else yet now I was speaking with my own. She had gone through the exact same thing I was now going through.

"Kelsey!" she said excitedly and then stopped. "I was going to call you, really… I need to ask you to forgive me…"

I was silent, so she kept going. "You are my daughter. I haven't had much experience raising a teenager. When you told me you were pregnant, it was just as if I was my mother. She did the exact same thing to me, and I suffered because of it... I'm sorry, Kelsey. I was being a poor example of Christ and a bad mother..."

I swallowed and heard her start to cry on the other end. "It's okay mom… Please, don't cry. I think I've had enough tears to last me a life time."

"How've you been doing with sleep?" she asked sniffing.

"What? Sleep? Oh yeah, that's where you lay down in your bed and close you eyes in quietness for nine hours straight, right?"

She pushed out a laugh. "It'll get better. You used to cry non-stop during the entire night until you hit two years old. Even then you would crawl out of your crib and into our room. It's amazing you even had a younger sister at all." She caught her breath.

"What?" I asked in surprise, clinging to the phone. "I have a sister?"

The other end was silent. "You probably called for Biko, right? I'll go see if he's around. Hold on."

"Mom? Mom! Mom!" I yelled into the receiver. "Mom!"

"Sorry, he's out with some friends right now. You can call back later on and he might be back," she said and with that she hung up on me.

My hand still clutched the phone as I tried to decipher what had just happened. I had a younger sister. I had a little sister. What was her name? How old was she now? Why hadn't she told me about her before? Where was she, now? What had happened to her? Was she alive? Did she know about me? I was about to call my mom back but Dillan started crying again. I heaved a sigh. I went into his room but accidentally knocked over a bottle of something on my night stand.

I bent over to pick it up and realised it was the pills that Erik had given me. I opened them and took a look. They seemed harmless enough. Dillan had stopped crying but I knew he would be up in an hour or two wanting something to eat. I was exhausted so I poured all of them into the palm of my hand. These would make me full of energy again. These would solve all my problems, and I was so drained after all my sleepless nights. But something inside me told me that this would not solve my problems. How many times had I seen shows on how people got addicted to these things?

If the body that God had given me was tired, it only meant that I was human and that it needed rest. Maybe that rest wouldn't come right away, because Dillan had woken up again, but it would come soon. God would not abandon me to this. I didn't need a pill to make me do something that was not natural. I need to start respecting my body, the temple of God. I would not ruin it anymore, sexually or by giving it drugs. "I belong to God, and God alone," I said as I flushed them down the toilet and went to pick up my precious child.

I was glad that I hadn't kept the pills that night because Dillan woke me up five times. I could now see why God had intended children to be conceived inside the marriage commitment. At least if I was married and an adult I could have my husband wake up and take care of him sometimes, but because of a stupid night out, I was a mother. I had never thought that all this could happen to me. Everyone in books always said that and I laughed at them. Of course they should have known. But I really didn't and now all I was, was an extra number in the statistics. I always used protection, even with Alex, but even with all the protection methods possible there is only one that will never fail.

I was sure not to get pregnant anymore, until I wanted to. I never understood why all the shows on teen sexuality and pregnancy barely ever mentioned the one hundred percent effective method to avoid getting pregnant or an S.T.D. They always skimmed through the section on abstinence and waiting until your married.