Baby

How blessed am I to know that – all because my little baby went to Heaven before I was ready to let him go…

Christ in Glory with Saint Peter (Moretta da Brescia)

When my youngest little baby died before he was born I was terribly terribly sad for a very long time.

This occurred prior to my conversion, which occurred through Grace and no merit of my own, and though I was born and raised as a Catholic, and though I participated in the Sacraments, I was completely without faith.

Faith is a strange thing.  A person cannot have half faith.  There is no way to half believe in eternal life.  One cannot put one foot in the faith and the other outside it.  A person cannot be lukewarm about their faith.  In a world where people err on the side of caution and use political correctness to create a lukewarmness that would surely grieve our God, faith is a calling to the absolute.

We cannot half jump off a cliff.  We either stay on the edge or jump right off.  We must commit to a decision either way.  And without the solid belief in God – the true belief in the GOODNESS of God, then it is difficult for a person to have faith and to understand that even when terrible things happen, God is Good (and even when wonderful things happen, God is good).

And I just happened to be – at that time – a person without any faith.  I was the person who was trying to jump off the cliff and stay on the edge at the same time.  I was the double agent that was trying to hold on to both possibilities just in case one was wrong.

And that is so terribly exhausting.

When that little baby went to Heaven before he was even born, many people tried to help me to move on with my life.  People told me that I was being a bad mother if I was sad at the passing of that baby because I had other children.  And though they meant well, they were wrong.  You see, I love my living children, and I also love my dead child.  It is just the nature of my heart.  And my child who went to Heaven before I was ready to let him go is as loved by me and as close to me as my living children.

Perhaps, in some ways, he is closer.  You see, I believe now that it was through the intervention of that little child, seated as he is in God’s eternal kingdom, that caused God to fill my soul with the Holy Spirit so as to inspire me to know the Goodness of God.  For in a moment – standing with a mop in my hand at the back door of my home – I knew (out of nowhere) that my baby, for whom I was mourning, was in Heaven.  And I knew that he is safe.  And I knew that God is GOOD.  And I knew that God loves me – even as terribly imperfect as I am.  And knowing all of that, I knew also that my God is an awesome God.

And how blessed am I to know that – all because my little baby went to Heaven before I was ready to let him go…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.