It was just before the fall of Roe, we learned about Brooke and Billy, in a secular media outlet working overtime to portray the trauma of a young woman now trapped in pregnancy. (As if pregnancy is a disease.)

She had 48 hours to get an abortion before Texas’ heartbeat law went into effect. Unable to get an appointment, she visited a pro-life pregnancy center that told her she was 3 months pregnant, and her twins had strong beating hearts. 

That news changed her mind. 

And now, just this week, The Washington Post has written another story showcasing the family: the children, now bubbling 2-year-olds, totting around Tampa where the father, who was first making minimum wage as a young adult with no real ambition or prospects outside of tearing it up at the local skate park, now has a full-time job with the military, making enough to allow Brooke to stay at home with the children. And he loves his new role. 

“Billy said he loved being a dad. He liked to lie on the floor of the girls’ room and feel the weight of his daughters as they climbed on his chest. When he threw them up in the air and caught them in his arms, they looked at him like he was the most important person in the world,” the writer shares. 

And he truly missed them during his time at military training, to the point of tears.

“I miss you and our beautiful girls so much to the point that whenever I think of y’all, my eyes water or it feels like I need to cry,” he wrote in a letter after his first week of basic training. “I think about you every day and I wonder what you’re thinking of.”

Sounds awesome, right? 

Not in the eyes of the secular media. The story teeters on hope but always leaves a tinge of distaste. Brooke lives in constant fear that Billy is going to cheat. Billy is always on his phone and misses his friends at the skate park. Brooke yearns for the day she can walk out of her cozy apartment to work instead of staying home to relish in the real recreation of children. Beaming beautiful girls who stand with their arms outstretched for more love. Raising precious gifts of life. 

“As her husband kissed her goodbye and walked out the door in his uniform,” the article states, “Brooke imagined what it would be like to leave the house on her own every day — to drive to her own job and get her own paycheck…”

That’s how the article ends — Brooke busily filling out online forms in earnest hope of becoming a personal trainer. 

If I could talk to Brooke, I would tell her she will have days on end to fill out forms and go to career classes or even college, maybe alongside her twin girls. She’ll be in her 30s when her daughters are applying to school or checking out community college. 

But right now at 19, when your body is fertile and energy seems a bit more endless than in the 30-year-olds that she sees at swim class doting on their children and talking about their “doctor husbands,” as the article says, this is the perfect time to build and move forward with the love that you have found with Billy — and maybe even look to God!  

Most fairytale endings were never planned. As I always remember my mother saying about my father, married in their early 20s, fumbling forward together after finding each other both living in London, with a whimsical look in her eye, she would say: “We were in love …” 

And that’s where caution is thrown to the wind and two people decide to embark on the craziest trip around the sun — the journey we take to Heaven with our spouse. It’s a true vocation that offers meaning and purpose and divine providence — especially with little ones ever demanding that love mothers and fathers learn to so freely give, without question or hesitation, when you don’t even know where it’s coming from. 

It’s the earnest, real, raw emotion — and unknown predicaments and constant demands — that keep us going, and this Catholic mother is on her knees every day asking God for grace and guidance to persevere. 

We did live through a pandemic, did we not? There are no more guarantees for the ones who spent years planning and trying to have it all figured out. The broken economy has left no one unscathed. 

As the article shifts to abortion policy, discussing the many states that have enacted pro-life laws or what they dub anti-abortion legislation, they are right in saying that it is too early to know “how many babies were born because of the fall of Roe.” But we do know that these two girls Olivia and Kendall now have full lives due to it. And thanks be to God, they are joined by countless more. 

As Brooke pondered her choice to keep her babies, she told The Washington Post: “If I would have had the abortion …” She stopped. “I can’t even think of it that way now,” she said. “Those are our babies, and they’re people.”

I hope some staffer happens to leave this article in the Oval Office for Biden to pick up as his administration is trying to do away with any data on these “persons” that are so callously lost to abortion due to policies that don’t treat beating hearts as persons. 

Maybe Brooke and Billy could change the world with their one message. 

Brooke herself scratches her head about why their story has become such a focal point. “She doesn’t understand why some anti-abortion activists see them as the ultimate success story,” the writer says. 

Brooke adds, “It doesn’t make sense to me that we would be that shining example.” Their lives, she said, were “so imperfect.”

But, dear Brooke, the beauty of our lives lies in this imperfection — this surrender to the will of God and the care and concern for others over what anything might look like on the surface. ... It’s in the messes of life that take us out of ourselves to care for someone else where we find our true glory. 

To be someone for somebody — what a beautiful gift!