a child her husband never wanted

Hi!I want to tell the story of a single mother who happens to be my best friend. This is just one story but I am sure it is the story of thousands that are similar. My friend married when she was just eighteen years old, a man nine years her senior. Shortly after they began their married life together she found out that she was expecting their first child. Then, after seven months of excited expectation and preparation, she received the earth-shattering news: her baby, the child she had prayed for and carried, was dead. She and her husband reacted very differently to this tragedy and that was, so to say, the beginning of the end.Five years after this she and her husband were given a beautiful, healthy baby boy, followed nineteen months later by another. Although this couple was blessed with lively healthy children, their marriage was by now definitely on the rocks. My friend was doing everything she could, for her children’s sake to hold her family together. Two years later she found out that she was expecting again, a child her husband never wanted. But she held on, determined to accept this child as the gift that it was. She was given a beautiful, bouncing baby girl. Unfortunately, some months after her daughter was born, her marriage was broken beyond repair. Her husband left and they divorced. Within the year he remarried and three years later he disappeared from their lives completely.Abandoned with no support or financial aid, she made attempts to locate her ex-husband, hoping that he would want to be part of his children’s lives. Unfortunately, these inquiries led to yet another tragedy when she was finally told by authorities that her children’s father was dead. She now was not only left to raise her children alone, but she had to find a way to help and guide her three young children, (by now nine, seven and four respectively), through the grief and pain of their father’s death, as well as dealing with her own grief.So to all those whose lives are similarly playing out, who may wonder if their children will ever appreciate what they are doing or hold it against them, I say never give up. One day your children will appreciate the gift that they have in their mother. It may take years (it’s taken me almost twenty), and unfortunately, you may never see it, but one day they will appreciate you and take the chance to say what every mother’s child should say: “Thank you, Mom.”