A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original review appears below. Ronda Bosch is church program coordinator at St. Andrew’s Church, Guelph, Ontario.
Good Christian teenage girls don’t get pregnant! Oh yes they do. Just a few years ago Reginald Bibby and Don Posterski gave us the following statistics – “premarital sex with someone you love is condoned by 80% of Canada’s teenagers,” and on a first date 28% say yes to petting and 11% continue to sexual relations (pp. 47-52 of Friendship). Then what happens in your church or in your home when the word is out: “I’m pregnant”?
A dad named Bill has let us into his home and his heart by this journal account of his fourteen year old daughter’s pregnancy. The recording of his thoughts and prayers and letters is the way Bill takes us with him through the nine months of Angela’s pregnancy. His one theme is that God’s love and forgiveness is constant.
As a father, Bill deals with his daughter in a loving, accepting way. As a Christian he challenges her to renew her love for Jesus Christ and once again establish her relationship with him as a priority in her life. As a minister of the gospel he is prepared to let his church counsel and direct him and his family through this crisis. Despite the personal hurt and anger Bill experienced, he dared to be a loving Christian father and leader regardless of the cost. The results were a repentant daughter, a caring and supportive family, an understanding and sensitive congregation and above all a loving and forgiving God.
I found this little book to be an interesting approach to teenage pregnancy because it focussed not only on the girl and her “problem” but also on the family and the church. It showed the very human and emotional responses of a mother and father, of brothers and sisters, and of fellow believers. You cannot read it without feeling the pain of the parents, the guilt and shame of the teenagers, and the disgust and disapproval of well-meaning Christians. As Bill records his anguish over those months one feels that anguish with him. But one also feels the love shown in very practical ways to Angela, her father, and her family. And it is this love that sees them all through the pregnancy, and the birth and then the death of a baby girl.