I applied for a scholarship to The Associated Press which would pay everything at college plus give me an internship to do hands-on projects in the Associated Press offices. Surprisingly, I was called for an interview at The Associated Press' main building in Downtown Los Angeles on a Sunday. I was competing with one other lady, a Freshman in college. Here I was competing for a scholarship prize that a high schooler had never even been in the finalists for. “This must be for me! This must be where God wants me!”

As my parents drove me to the huge high-rise building where The Associated Press kept their offices and where I would be interviewed, I felt so nervous. Downtown Los Angeles was so intimidating to a high school girl who had only lived in a small town with no stop lights or stop signs and only 4 rows of houses! We located the office where my interview would take place and sat in a waiting area with the other young lady competing for the scholarship. It seemed like she had everything together: business attire, professionally-styled hair, perfect make-up, a large portfolio in her hands. I, on the other hand, was chasing after a toddler and felt like a complete misfit. When I was finally called in for the interview, I handed Andy over to my parents and stepped through the solid wood double doors to the interviewing room. I must have turned three shades of red when I beheld my surroundings: in this room towering with floor-to-ceiling windows were about a dozen journalists, editors and various other “Big-Whigs” sitting around a huge round table, some looking at me with scrutinizing eyes, others with a welcoming smile. I had been envisioning a smaller, more intimate interview between one other person and myself. That is when it hit me: I had been chosen among possibly thousands of others to compete for a life-changing scholarship and career training! I felt so unprepared, but I answered as best as I could and exhaled a sigh of relief when the interview was finally completed 45 minutes later. I was told that I would receive a phone call later that week letting me know their decision. During this time of waiting, I prayed that the Lord’s will be done and that He would guide my steps. Several days later, the phone call came in with their decision: The other young lady was awarded the scholarship and internship. What was this... a feeling of relief on my part? I can almost remember a burst of tension leaving my body.

I knew in my heart that I did not want the fast-paced, L.A., rat-race lifestyle, but I was led to believe that this was what I should be striving for. A full-time career, climbing the corporate ladder, heavy competition among colleagues, promotions, pay raises and bonuses, social status- all of this equaled success. This was what was spoken of constantly, but somehow others overlooked the fact that I had a little boy that needed his mother. And because of my naivety, I never searched for a different path when all the other students around me had big plans for their future. Surely, to simply be a mother was not a big plan; it was ordinary, no promotions possible, no “congratulations” at the end of the day for a job well done. I was following the crowd again just as I had when I was a rebellious teen, but this time I was following the "right" crowd. If I was following the “right” crowd, why did something feel wrong? I took a long detour trying to do things the way the world worked. I received three scholarships upon my graduation from high school and I enrolled in Cal State Bakersfield as a full-time student. Even though I was turned down from The Associated Press scholarship, I did not take that as a sign from the Lord to focus on 2-year-old Andy full-time. I was his mother, but my own mom was his caretaker for several days a week when I drove the one-hour commute to school. Three days a week I was gone for 12 hours a day. I not only attended classes that were required, I went above and beyond the general electives I needed.

Mike and I had been together since Andy was 4 months old and we knew we wanted to eventually get married, but during my senior year of high school in the midst of my confusion, I broke things off with him. I did not know what I wanted out of life and for no reason at all, I told him that I no longer wanted to marry him. This broke his heart because he had dreams of being Andy's legal father and of us having more children together. For the several months that Mike and I were separated, he continued to visit Andy at our house every day while I was at college. At the beginning of my freshman year of college, Andy came down with a horrible cold. For many weeks we did not know what was wrong and his pediatrician kept prescribing different antibiotics, alarmed at the fact that Andy did not respond to any of them. After several visits to the emergency room, my grandmother heard Andy’s cough on the phone and said, “That boy has whooping cough! Take him to see an older doctor.” And that is what we did- an old doctor in his 80's heard Andy’s cough and diagnosed him right away as having full-blown whooping cough. It pained me to call home from college throughout the day to check on Andy, but he was unable to even say more than a few words because of his coughing fits. My mom or Mike were there holding his ear to the phone. That should have been me holding him! This mother should have been there to hold her little boy and comfort him in the midst of that horrible illness that left scar tissue on his lungs, yet I was at college pursuing a degree. It did not make sense to me. Was this what other mothers did? Sacrifice. Sacrifice their motherhood, but even worse than that, sacrifice their children's trust for the prize of "degree" or "career"? Although I knew that college was not for me, would you believe it? I was scared not to go to college. What would become of me if I was a drop-out? I would bring shame to my family because there had never been anyone in our family to graduate from college. All eyes were on me and here I was, blowing a chance of a lifetime.

After our break-up, feeling desperate and trying to grasp for some new hope for his future, Mike drove to the Armed Forces recruiting offices and decided to enlist in the Air Force. The recruiter for the Air Force was on his lunch break, but the recruiter for the Navy was outside having a smoke break and began a conversation with Mike. This led to Mike joining the Navy for a 4-year enlistment. He was given one month to get things together at home before flying across the United States for Basic Training.

Knowing that Mike was leaving for the Navy, I began to have second thoughts about my break-up with him. I apologized to him and told him that I still had the same dreams we had talked about before. We now made our marriage plans firm by promising a wedding when his Basic Training was completed. My thoughts started transforming from being a full-time student and a single career woman to being a full-time homemaker. While Mike was at boot camp, we wrote letters back and forth and I told him these thoughts. I told him that I no longer wanted to go to college and that I did not really want to be an editor or journalist. I wanted to stay home and take care of Andy and be there for him. Mike had no problems agreeing that this was the right decision to make. Now it was time to approach my parents with this idea. I was even more nervous to tell my parents that I wanted to quit college than I was when I went in for The Associated Press interview! My mind was playing horrible tricks on me because I could visualize my parents shaking their heads with shame, but it was Satan who did not want me to make this major decision that would strengthen my new marriage and my bond to my son. When I broke the news to my parents about me wanting to drop out of college, I remember the words coming from my mouth, "I just want to stay home". Oh, the shame I made myself feel when I said those words. If I knew then what I know now, I would have said, "I want to be the mother that God has called me to be." My mom told me that she thought I was making the right decision and my dad agreed. Their approval meant the world to me.

Mike and I were married on April 29, 1995 when Andy was almost three years old. At the age of 18, I was now an official homemaker and full-time mother and wife. One week after we were married, Mike was due to report to the Navy base in Florida. Of course, Andy and I had plans to move to Florida as a new family unit, but Andy's biological father refused to give Andy permission to leave the state of California. We had to hire an attorney and make a court appearance only four days after our wedding. Our lawyer seemed so confident that we could move to Florida as a family that I was told to go ahead and pack our belongings. The judge's decision was shocking though. Not only was Andy not allowed to move to Florida, he was now forbidden to move outside of four different counties in Southern California. The judge told me that I could move to Florida with Mike, but I would have to leave Andy behind with his biological father! There would be no way I would abandon my 2-year-old child to a grown man who had served time in jail, never paid child support, could not hold down a job and still partied with teenage girls. In addition to the ruling that would tear our new family apart, the judge granted Andy's biological father weekend visits even though we had testified that Andy had been exposed to adult movies, alcohol, violent behavior, and wild parties. His biological father did not even seek the weekend visits, but he was granted them anyways.

Just nine short days after our wedding, I drove Mike to the airport, not knowing when we would see each other again. Crying and clinging on to each other for one last time, Andy and I waved good-bye to Mike as he left for Florida. Watching the airplane take off, I held Andy in my arms and tried to suppress feelings of anger and hopelessness. I struggled with depression, not knowing how this court decision fit into God's plan, but I held on to the truth that all things work for good to those that love God. We prayed that the Navy would allow Mike to be transferred back to California.

After five months in Florida, Mike was given a hardship transfer back to California so that we could be united! We moved to the Navy base in Ventura County, one of the counties that Andy was allowed to live in, only to discover that Mike was assigned to a mobile construction battalion, which meant that he would be home for seven months and then deployed for seven months for the next three years. The first year of our marriage, Mike was gone 10 out of 12 months. Throughout the four years of Mike’s service in the Navy, he was gone more than half of the time. During the months when Mike was deployed, I not only had to cope with the loneliness of being without my husband and the strain of being a single mother, but I now had to solely take charge of setting up Andy's overnight visits with his father. Thankfully, Andy’s father still lived in the same small town that my parents lived in and on every occasion when Andy was scheduled for a visit with his father, Andy was dropped off at my parent’s house within a few hours of the visitation. Even with these short visits though, Andy was repeatedly around company and circumstances that I never would have exposed him to: partying and drinking, cussing, driving in vehicles without being in a car seat, and watching Rated R movies. One time Andy was even allowed to take a gulp of beer just to see what it tasted like.

The fact that Andy never once stayed the night with his father brought me a little peace of mind. What brought knots into my stomach though was that each weekend I would prepare Andy to see his father, I would see the nervousness and confusion in Andy. When it came to actually dropping Andy off at the agreed meeting location, Andy always cried and clung on to me with all his might. There were a few times that I arranged to drive in the car with Andy and his biological father and just stay the weekend at my parent’s house- that way Andy would not have to drive the whole two hours without me. My prayers to the Lord were continually based upon my longing for Andy to be legally adopted by Mike and for our family to be independent of the instability and manipulation of Andy’s biological father.

Two years after Mike and I were married, I found out that I was pregnant! Mike had just come home from a 7-month deployment to Korea the month before. It was a known fact on the Navy base that a large amount of conceptions occurred the first month that a husband would return from a lengthy deployment. Unfortunately, because I got pregnant the first month that Mike was home from Korea, my due date was at the beginning of the next long deployment. Mike had to leave in November to go to Puerto Rico for a 7-month deployment when I was 7 months pregnant. Mike was able to fly home on a 10-day vacation just a few days before I went into labor. Our first daughter, Tiffany Elaine, was born on January 16. Mike returned to Puerto Rico when Tiffany was 8 days old and returned when she was 5 months old. Mike’s service in the Navy was quickly coming to a close and because of all the separation our new family had been through, we decided that Mike would not re-enlist in the Navy when his 4 years were complete. Mike rode his bike back and forth to the Base library to check the internet for job openings. One month before he was to be discharged from the Navy, we were starting to feel really desperate about our future and where we would be living and wondering if Mike would have no choice but to re-enlist. That is when our pastor’s wife called us on the phone and said, “I was looking at the Southern Baptist newsletter and it said that there is a job opening at a Christian camp in Northern California. The position is for an Assistant Food Service Director. I really do not want you all to move so far away, but I felt the Lord wanted me to tell you about this”. We traveled the 8 hours north to Jenness Park Christian Camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While Mike was interviewing with the director, I walked around the camp with Andy and Tiffany. It was so beautiful and refreshing to be in the fresh mountain air with the smell of pine trees and the sound of the slow-moving river running through the camp. One week later, Mike was called on the phone and told that he did indeed get the position of Assistant Food Service Director! God had opened the doors for us to move to this camp!

The only thing in our way now was the court order which did not allow Andy to move out of Southern California. Would we have to make another appearance in court with a lawyer and ask permission to move with Andy to Jenness Park? We prayed that Andy's biological father would sign legal papers allowing Andy to move out of the four designated counties without a court appearance and to our surprise, he did so without an argument. We had to promise to bring Andy for visits on the holidays and in the summer. Just the thought of Andy being with his father, whom he did not even really know, for several weeks at a time made me nervous and scared, but I had to put Andy in God's hands. I had to completely trust God with Andy's life. In my heart I knew God would not put Andy in any situation where He was not in control. All of our new neighbors at camp camp helped us unpack. My parents were also there helping us unload and basking in the beauty of the surroundings. As my parents drove away though, I could see that my mom was crying a lot. We were like best friends and both of my parents were such hands-on grandparents that it was difficult realizing that we would no longer be just a short drive away. Now we were half-way across the state!