Danielle has overcome darkness, abuse, and anger to embrace motherhood following unplanned pregnancy. And now she guides others toward healing through pregnancy help.
Her story has many difficult parts. Over time the founder and Executive Director of Redeeming Love Ministries in Oblong, Illinois, came to understand that the cross of her past was actually a powerful tool that could benefit others.
“Just like what we do in the center, we have to be in a place of healing before we can really share it as an encouraging testimony,” Danielle said.
When mentoring clients, she walks with them and shares parts of her experience accordingly so the client can see how someone else has survived, breaking down walls.
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Danielle was raised in a Christian home, but there was a lot of emotional and verbal abuse in her upbringing, she said, and not a lot of love.
“I got to where I was hurting so bad emotionally that it led me to want to feel something, so I started cutting,” Danielle recalled. “And it led me also to try to commit suicide in high school.”
She felt the physical pain but pushed back her emotions so that she was numb, and it became hard to have relationships. She said she “ended up just very angry.”
Danielle’s parents split in a situation that played out in their church community with her mother left on the outs and it further negatively impacted her view of Christians and church.
Her mother found a new church and made Danielle go with her.
“I didn't want to be a part of it,” she said. “I didn't want anything to do with church. I really didn't want anything to do with God because I blamed him for everything that was going on.”
“I was very angry and hateful towards all the people that were in that church,” said Danielle. “But I saw my mom, through all of that, regardless of how angry and mean her kids were and how much she was hurting, she just went to the Lord.”
Her mother remarried and Danielle rebelled, leaving home as soon as she could. She then learned she had a chronic medical condition that had been untreated for years and likely caused her depression. The doctor told Danielle and her mother that because of the condition Danielle wouldn’t be able to have children.
“At that time, I kind of decided that I didn't ever want a family anyway,” Danielle said. Marriage was not a positive kind of goal in her eyes.
God was trying to get my attention
She began taking medication for her condition and felt better physically. Still, she moved in with a friend and got into drugs and alcohol for roughly the next decade.
“My mom knew that I was not in a good place, and she prayed for me,” Danielle said. “And I had friends that were praying for me.”
During this time, she said wanted the drugs and alcohol so bad she was willing to do anything for them.
“And that led me even to prostitution,” Danielle said. “I mean, anything that you can think of, it didn't matter.”
“I was not a good person. I was very lost,” she told Pregnancy Help News. “I still was angry at God, would blame God for everything.”
“But there were times that I remember that I know God was trying to get my attention,” Danielle said.
She ended up with a DUI she said shouldn't have survived. The car was completely submerged in water, and the only reason that she and others were able to get out is they had been smoking and the windows were down.
Danielle said she was ready to give up that night and not even try to get out of the car.
“I was just going to let the vehicle just take me,” she said. “And my friend pulled me out of the vehicle.”
That was the second car wreck she’d had because of being under the influence, she said, but the first time she didn't get caught.
Now she was without a driver's license or a vehicle. Further, she’d been living out of her car, so when she crashed it into the water, she lost most everything she had. All this, while she was working for her mother in the insurance industry.
Deeper into darkeness
Danielle tried to clean up a bit, but this meant drinking at home instead of at bars. She’d been told by a friend that she couldn’t sleep on her couch anymore and she’d heard of a place that someone was trying to rent out – which was condemned – but it still meant she was on her own. Danielle said she then went even harder into her destructive behaviors, simply walking to where she needed to go, whether to bars or work.
It was at the new apartment where something else pivotal in Danielle’s story occurred.
She went out one night with a friend and they came back to Danielle’s place with two guys. The guys were trouble, Danielle said, and she and her friend knew it.
“I don't know what we were thinking except that we were under the influence,” she said. “So, we weren't thinking, but we went back to my apartment, and we were going to party some more there.”
Her friend decided to leave.
“So, then I was left alone with both of them, and I ended up being raped,” Danielle said.
Amid the horror of what happened and despite having been told she couldn’t have a baby, Danielle felt certain she’d become pregnant.
But she was in denial for a while, and that night caused her to go deeper into what she was doing.
Danielle knew that drugs and alcohol could cause her to lose the pregnancy. When that didn’t happen, she went off her medicine, knowing that this could cause her to miscarry.
“And when that still didn't work, I ended up talking to a friend and admitting that I was pregnant,” she said.
Danielle grew up believing that abortion was wrong, even so, she had the friend drive her to the local Planned Parenthood for an abortion.
While at the abortion appointment, she struggled to answer questions or talk to staff.
“I just had this overwhelming thought that I couldn't go through with what I was there wanting to do because I wouldn't be able to forgive myself,” Danielle recalled. “And so, I basically just took a pregnancy test and walked out.”
I recognized Jesus’s love through her words
Then came telling her parents and extended family about being pregnant.
Her mother and stepfather were calm and urged her to move home because, her mother told her, she needed help and where she was living wasn’t suitable for a baby.
“I remember when she said that, that I recognized Jesus’s love through her words,” Danielle said.
“And that was the very first time that I really understood Christ's love for me, was through my mom,” she said. “Because again, in my mind, I had done everything to just destroy my mom, my stepdad. And I know that that's how we are with God, is we've done everything that we can (to destroy Him), but He still loves us.”
Danielle moved back home and began to clean up.
“It was the first time that I had been sober, and I don't know how long,” she said. “And I was about five months pregnant by the time that I told my parents.”
She received hurtful reaction from some family members and support from others. For a time, she felt unsupported except by her mother and stepdad.
Danielle gave birth to her son in September 2012.
She continued to wrestle with her demons during his young life. But she had it in her mind to be the best mom she could be and began attending church to provide the necessary foundation for a good life for him.
“I wanted him to have the option of knowing Jesus and following Him,” Danielle said.
Looking back, Danielle recognizes many times when God protected her, and that her son has been instrumental in saving her.
“I was able to even see where God was through all of the hurt and all of the experiences that I went through,” she said. “I could see that He hadn't left me. He hadn't abandoned me, that He was there all the time trying to get me to follow Him.”
Danielle’s faith grew, as did her desire to serve God. She prayed to the Lord to show her His plan for her.
“I just started praying,” she said, “and I kind of stood on Matthew 7:7. Ask, and He will give it to you, seek and you shall find, knock on the door will be open.”
After weeks of praying, she received a vision for a pregnancy center, not even knowing what a pregnancy center was. Her vision was clear, however, and she shared it with a friend. God told her He was going to use all her past experiences and hurts, all the bad things, she said.
“And He was going to use them here, turning them around for good,” Danielle said, “using them for me to be able to help other women not have to go through what I did, or at least not have to do it alone.”
Tweet This: God told her He was going to use all her past experiences and hurts, all the bad things, and turn them around for good with pregnancy help.
“So that vision, I just kind of took it and ran with it,” she told Pregnancy Help News.
Danielle had been part of a statewide women’s group around the time her son was born, later becoming secretary and president of the local chapter. She’d studied nursing earlier but did not complete her degree. She did finish her bachelor's degree in business in 2019 which she’d started when her son was born.
We've seen lives change
Redeeming Love Ministries was founded in November 2020 and the pregnancy help ministry began seeing clients in early 2021, before later procuring the building where they now serve clients. Danielle said everything has been in God’s time.
The response has been robust, as there is a great need for services in the largely rural area of Crawford County in southeastern Illinois. Calls were coming in from area social service offices before the center opened.
In addition to the numerous services offered by pregnancy medical clinics Redeeming Love assists clients with transportation to the center and to local food banks when needed. Danielle and her team collaborate with the local probation office and also do what they can to connect people with mental health services and addiction recovery resources. She touches on cyclical addiction when she speaks on behalf of the center. They are working through growing, meeting needs, and recruiting volunteers.
Danielle got married early last year and the family is raising her now teenage son, who knows her story and knows she is a different person than she was. She was set to share her testimony publicly for the first time at the center’s banquet last fall.
A prayer partner pointed out to Danielle one day as they sat in the center’s prayer room that Danielle was literally sitting in the middle of her vision.
Danielle said it amazes her to think about, and she wishes she’d had something like Redeeming Love Ministries available to her when she was pregnant.
“It is very humbling to think that it started from just a vision in my head that and now it's real and we've seen the fruit of it,” she said. “We've seen lives change. We've seen a baby be saved from abortion just because we exist. We've seen moms and dads striving to better their relationship in ways that they couldn't by themselves, just all of it.”
“It kind of just goes back to God knows more than we do,” Danielle said. “And He equips us more than we can see and at the moment.”
