Selena’s childhood was marked by addiction, abuse and mental instability.

Her parents split up when she was 2. Her father struggled with drug addiction and dealt drugs, while her mother was a young mom trying to survive her own difficult upbringing. 

After Selena’s parents separated, her mom entered several abusive relationships. The men who came into their lives struggled with alcoholism, which left Selena without a healthy father figure growing up.

Even religion, she says, had become tangled with pain because of the way it had been misused in her family’s past.

Finding Jesus

When Selena was 11, her mom sent her and her siblings to a Bible camp in British Columbia.

“I don’t think my mom even knew it was really a Christian Bible camp,” Selena says with a laugh. “I think she just needed a break.”

Instead, Selena encountered Jesus. 

When she returned home, she repeatedly asked her mom if they could start going to church. Eventually, her mom agreed, and Selena says her family began attending church after her mother came to faith and later married a Christian man.

That season became the beginning of her relationship with Jesus.

Finding out she was pregnant

At 18, while still in high school, Selena found herself unexpectedly pregnant.

She was living on her own, renting a room in a house, working full time, and trying to make ends meet with little support around her.

“I was really alone during that time,” she says. “I had a couple friends, but they were all in the party scene – so nothing healthy around me.”

Despite her circumstances, abortion never felt like the answer. She and her baby’s father knew they were choosing life for their son.

They tried to build a family together. But over the next two and a half years, the relationship became increasingly toxic as drugs and abuse entered their home.

Although Selena stayed sober throughout her pregnancy, she relapsed just three months after giving birth.

Eventually, she reached a point where she knew something had to change.

“I knew that I needed Christ at that point,” Selena says.

She soon left the relationship, returned to church, began attending meetings through Narcotics Anonymous, and slowly started rebuilding her life.

For the first time in years, hope felt possible. Then everything changed again.

‘I felt like I was living in a nightmare’

As Selena was rebuilding her life, she reconnected with her son’s father. When her son was 2, she discovered she was pregnant again.

Selena recalls that while she was initially scared when she discovered she was pregnant the first time, she also felt excitement and hope for the future. 

This time, however, fear overshadowed everything else. Selena was back in her mother’s basement with her son, struggling to stay sober. The possibility of remaining connected to him felt unbearable.

“I was so scared,” Selena says. “I was terrified and I was so ashamed because I was finally getting my life back together. I could not see past the fear of what that would look like. I felt like I was living in a nightmare at the time.”

Selena says she knew her parents would do what they could to help. Still, she felt overwhelmed by the weight of the pregnancy and believed the responsibility rested entirely on her shoulders. When she told her mom about the pregnancy, her mother encouraged her to keep the baby. 

However, consumed by fear and feeling trapped by her circumstances, Selena ultimately chose abortion.

“I felt like it was an answer to my problem,” she says.

For a moment, Selena says abortion felt like a relief.

“That problem is gone,” she remembers thinking.

But the pain did not disappear. Instead, she buried it, pushing the trauma down as she focused on sobriety, college and work.

The loss that uncovered everything

At 23, Selena married the man who is now her husband. She describes him simply as “a great Christian guy.”

When they became pregnant soon after their wedding, she was overjoyed.

But around three and a half months into the pregnancy, Selena miscarried. Suddenly, every emotion she had spent years avoiding came rushing back.

“I thought, ‘God’s so mad at me [and] this is my punishment,’” Selena recalls. 

She says she believed her past choices — including becoming a teen mom, struggling with addiction after her first pregnancy, and having an abortion — meant she did not deserve to be a mother. 

“The lies were so loud,” Selena says. “That’s how I thought God looked at me, and it’s not true. It [was] all lies from the enemy.”

While grieving in the emergency room, Selena says a doctor asked whether she had faith. His response forever changed how she viewed God.

The doctor told her: “That is not the God we serve. Your Father loves you. You are worthy. You are a daughter. This is not a punishment.”

Rather than writing a prescription for medication, the doctor wrote several Bible passages on his prescription pad for Selena to read and pray through. He also prayed over her.

“The Holy Spirit was so thick in the room,” she says.

That moment broke the lies Selena had believed about God and marked the beginning of her healing.

Healing and restoration

Healing did not happen overnight. It took two years before Selena became pregnant again, and she describes that season as one of learning to replace shame with truth through Scripture, prayer, worship and the renewing of her mind.

Looking back, she says she now understands that her abortion was never beyond God’s ability to redeem. While she deeply grieves that decision, she believes God would have been faithful no matter what.

“I know now that if I had had that child, the Lord would have redeemed all of it,” she says. “The Lord would have made beauty from my ashes and showed up in ways that I didn’t know that He was there.”

Today, Selena no longer carries the shame that once defined her.

“I don’t feel shame in any way because the Lord has removed that,” she says. “He’s given me the vision of who He is and who He’s always been.”

Selena says her life now looks nothing like the one she grew up in.

She and her husband are raising three children together on a family farm with her parents. She is also a homeschool stay-at-home mom. God has restored her family, and today she shares a close, healthy relationship with her parents. Together, Selena and her husband are completing pastoral training and helping lead a revival home church of about 75 people.

In addition to serving in ministry, Selena hosts “Her Safe Place,” a podcast where she shares about faith and the work God has done in her life. 

“I love sharing this story and I love talking about it because God’s renewing power is just more than you could ever hope for,” Selena says. 

Selena’s encouragement to women facing an unplanned pregnancy: 

“To the woman considering abortion: you may feel like it’s your only option, but it doesn’t have to be your answer. God has a plan and purpose for your baby, and He has not forgotten you. Whether you choose to raise your baby or pursue adoption, God can make a way where there seems to be no way. You are not alone. You have options. And there is hope.” 

Written by Melina Nicole