Be Human or Be Holy?

Dear God,
I have been sitting at this table for a while staring into space. I have a lot to tell you but starting is a challenge. Because as much as I deeply love and honour you, I sometimes do not understand you.
Your ways are too deep.
I have been searching for a house girl for as long as you know. Just someone good that will take care of our little girl while I do the corporate. That on its own is a matter for another day. There seems to be a unionist movement for care workers these days.
Anyway, I finally got this girl- from Benue that was a perfect fit. Clean, kind, hardworking and a bit educated. I guess the current trajectories in the country did not allow her to continue her education. I remember kneeling to thank you for sending her to us. I was very grateful and relieved. The normal routine was to do a test immediately to confirm her health standard. Somehow, I was running on all four cylinders and did not get the chance. Five days later, I had a breather and finally did it. By that time, she had integrated well into the house and settled in. You would think she had known us for forever.
However, alas, the test came and she was pregnant. Hmmm.
Pregnant?
In the little time she stayed with us, we have had loads of conversations. I have inquired about a boyfriend, her parents, family history, background, and every other thing I could squeeze into that space. Thinking about it now, despite her very cheerful and pleasant nature, there was this sadness, this pain lurking behind her eyes. I did not want to probe too much; I knew she was the kind of person who would open up when she fully established trust.
I stared at the test result in my hand and felt so sad. I liked the girl, but how can I have her in my house when she is pregnant?
I called my Adam to come and address it. We had to let her go and he is very good at dropping deadly bombs calmly. When my Adam came home from work, we called her in and started the interrogations.
This girl told a story that simply ripped through my heart and left me raw and bleeding inside.
She is the first of five children from a single mother. Their father absconded with another woman when she was eight years old and her woman’s other marriage that produced the last two also ended when their mum had to run away with them to escape battering and possible death. She has been doing every manner of odd jobs to help her mum raise the others and when she heard that she could make some more money in Lagos, she felt she had to leave Benue to work in Lagos and add more funds to their income basket.
So she left with a team of other girls and they headed to Lagos. Alas, on their way, they ran into the dreaded Herdsmen/kidnappers. They hijacked their vehicle and took them to a deep forest miles away from human existence. They held them there for three weeks. And every day, three to four times a day, each of those evil men took their turns in raping and doing all manners of inhuman acts with them. All the girls, aged from seventeen to sixty. All, without exceptions. She said that at first, she cried and begged but after some days, she just closed her eyes and let it happen. She said that she realised that if she did not fight, she felt less pain and she could endure it for as long as it lasted.
Dad, I am not able to tell you the stories this girl told us but I will never forget the deep-rooted weeping that happened in my house that day.
Lord, this girl cried. No, she wept.
She wept from somewhere inside her soul and kept saying: “What will I tell my mother? I left her alone with four children to Lagos with the hope of working hard and helping her. Will I now come back with an added burden for her? What will I call this child? Who owns this child? How can I have this child? What will I do with it?”
She fell to the ground, held her head in her hands and she wept. Lord, she wept.
She said that apart from my Adam and I, she has not been able to recount her ordeal to anyone out of fear, shame and disbelief that she could go through such and survive. She said she still marvels at her survival and the fact that they released her even when she had no one to pay her ransom.
She told us about lots of people whom they killed or died out of wounds or heart attacks. And that they were made to dig the graves of those people.
She said that when she came out, knowing what she had been through, she confided in an older woman who told her to watch out for her menstruation, that if it didn’t come out at the time it should, she should go and check. And she said her menses came out exactly the day it was supposed to though it ran for only a day.
She was relieved nonetheless and was very grateful to You Lord that she had no consequences of the ordeal but alas, that was hoping against hope.
She had no money on her, nothing. The kidnappers had a POS with them and collected everything in their account and hers was only Sixteen thousand Naira.
Then she begged us to help her.
She begged us, begged, and really begged us to help her.
I cried that night. I wept Lord.
I have heard so much of the menaces of these herdsmen and kidnappers but not this real and not this close.
What could we do? How can we have her and her baby in the house?
How can we support an abortion even when we know the circumstances of the conception?
Should we be holy or should we be human?
Should we let this girl have this baby? Should we send her away and give her some money to situate herself?
What if she used it to go for an abortion? What Lord is the right thing to do here?
Be Holy or be human to a human?
Her life is not threatened by the pregnancy. The test showed that she was in perfect health. Beautiful, healthy and agile.
She just doesn’t want the baby, so should we then help her get rid of it by giving her funds?
I have never been so battered and confused in my life. I have never cried this hard.
So Lord I ask you? Why did you send this girl to me?
May I plead with you to please spare me next time? Don’t send people like this to me, my heart can’t take such levels of pain in people. Her cries still ring in my ears and I still have goosebumps when I think about her.
Our country is turning into a jungle of heartlessness, and I know you are watching.
Yes, we helped her; don’t ask me how you know everything, right?
This is your daughter and Dad, I am not very happy with you right now, but I am checking in.