I Found Out I Was Pregnant in a Kmart Bathroom

Pregnant. Nineteen. Pastor’s Kid. Unprepared.

It was the week of Thanksgiving, 1997. I was a student living on campus at a small junior college in Iowa. I’d graduated high school less than six months earlier, and truthfully, I had no plan for what came next.

I hadn’t dreamed of going to college. I hadn’t applied for scholarships. I missed all the deadlines. I had no aspirations—only a desperate need to fit in. So when it seemed like everyone else was making plans, I panicked and followed suit.

Education had never come easy for me. I wasn’t the kind of student who got excited about learning. In high school, I survived mostly by the grace of kind friends who shared their homework notes with me in the lounge before first period. I was driven by social life, not academics. Acceptance, not achievement.

So I signed up for college, still completely green to the world outside my small town of 1,000 people—where my dad was the pastor of the only church, our home sat next door, and the high school was directly across the street. I grew up in a literal fishbowl. Everyone knew me. Everyone watched me. Everyone had expectations.

Being the pastor’s kid came with pressure—some of it spoken, most of it not. My craving for acceptance often attracted the wrong people and pushed away the right ones.

That fall of 1997, I moved into my dorm not knowing who I really was. I had no clue how to navigate life outside that fishbowl. All I knew was I wanted to be liked—and I was willing to lose parts of myself to make it happen. The same reckless girl who had walked across a high school graduation stage in May was now walking into college with the same baggage—but with more freedom and fewer boundaries.

That so-called freedom? It caught up with me fast.

I missed it—my period, that is. I hadn’t really tracked these things. I was young and detached from my body’s rhythms, but something told me I was late. Too late.

It was a Sunday. Most of my friends were still gone for the weekend, and only my roommate Jory and I were in the dorm. I nervously told her what I suspected. She didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go to the store and get a test,” she said.

We got in the car and headed to Kmart. I was scared. But deep down, I already knew. I knew how. I knew when. And I remembered the dream God had given me—not long before. The details were so specific, so vivid. At the time, I didn’t know if it was a warning to stop before something happened or a whisper preparing me for what already was.

We bought the test. We walked straight to the back of the store and into the bathroom.

That’s where it happened.

Kmart.
Handicapped red metal walled stall.
Tile floor.
Thin air.

The result was instant.
Positive.
Undeniable.
Life-altering.

I cried—but only for a moment. Shock wrapped around me like a weighted blanket. I remember walking out of that bathroom a completely different person than I was when I walked in. I can still see the stall, the lighting, the mirror.

On the drive back to the dorm, I asked Jory for a cigarette. I was a social smoker at that time, and I announced I would have one last cigarette—knowing what I knew, it would be my last. But I couldn’t finish it.

The News Spreads

That night, as my roommates filtered back into our dorm, I told them the news. I have never been good at keeping secrets, especially when I need help processing something heavy—and this was heavier than anything I’d ever carried.

The next morning, we all skipped our classes and drove to Planned Parenthood. I needed confirmation. It was 1997—maybe those store-bought tests weren’t accurate? Maybe it was a mistake? But when we arrived, the doors were locked. Closed on Mondays.

We piled back into the car and drove to the next town, aimlessly searching. That’s when we stumbled upon a faith-based clinic for young mothers. The building was small and cluttered, with shelves and bins of donated clothes and baby supplies. The woman at the front desk was kind. She didn’t ask many questions. She simply handed me another test.

Positive. Again.

The drive home was a blur. I barely spoke.

Later, I stood at the communal payphone on the third-floor stairwell, clutching the cord and trying to make my voice sound steady. I called my sister-in-law first. I told her the news quickly, praying no one would walk by and overhear. She was kind but firm: “You have to tell your brother yourself.”

She arranged for me to go to her parents’ house that evening. Her father, who worked on campus, was a kind and understanding man. They welcomed me into their home, let me cry, and handed me their phone to call my brother.

We talked through the next steps—how to tell my parents, what Thanksgiving would look like, and the reality that this news was already spreading on campus. My classmates from my hometown, who also attended this college, had caught wind of it. The gossip train was running full speed.

I prayed my parents would hear it from me—not from someone else.

Thanksgiving was just days away. Soon I would have to sit across from my parents and tell them what I had done, who I had become, and how life as we all knew it was about to change.

I didn’t know if they would be angry. I didn’t know if they would be disappointed. I only knew one thing: I couldn’t hide anymore.

To be continued…