Support Young Families

This is a guest post by Bridgette Troyer. She's a Christian, wife of 14 months and mother of two months. She writes about life honestly and frankly. You can also follow her on Twitter. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out our guest post guidelines.

My husband and I did something that is uncommon in this society: became parents before our one-year anniversary, voluntarily. That choice spurred some pretty nasty sentiments and doomsday warnings from people who had no reason to give opinions to us.

We are a young married couple, married at ages 20 and 21, right after earning our associate degrees. Once we had insurance, we decided to pray and trust for God’s timing for expanding our family. Two months later we were pregnant. Now, we have a beautiful baby girl.

During our pregnancy we had great encouragement and support from our church family. Unfortunately, the rest of the world wasn’t so supportive. In fact, many times--and sometimes even now--we were essentially called stupid for making “that mistake,” or were told that we would regret getting pregnant so soon.

I’m not going to sugarcoat this; it’s not easy being newlywed parents. We are still discovering parts of living life together. Now we have another life to take care of and learn to live with. We believe it was God’s will for us to become a family of three when we did, and we feel blessed to be learning so much as we live.

I challenge you to support young families, whether it was their choice or situation that put them there. Build them up with wisdom, not doomsday warnings. Don’t steal the joy of those days from them with warnings of the trying days to come. Instead, be there to help guide them through with the wisdom you have.

Imagine being able to share in their joy with them as you walk beside them.