My Mission Begins in Heaven
It was Easter Sunday. A few days earlier we had found out I was pregnant with our third child. As we went to Mass and celebrated with family I felt so happy, thinking of the secret new life growing inside me. Then I started spotting. Instantly a wave of hopelessness covered me and I was left sitting in a place of confusion and failure. “Why was this happening?”, I thought. As I turned to the Lord in this place of waiting the phrase that kept coming up was “this baby is strong”. A few days later the miscarriage was confirmed. As I sat in my quiet grief, grateful for my toddler and preschooler building train tracks at my feet, I continued to hold onto the word the Lord had spoken: “this baby is strong”. Not in false hope; I knew my baby had died, but it wasn’t feeling the way I had expected and feared.
I had always had a deep fear of miscarriage which became especially palpable when I had hormonal struggles in my first two pregnancies. But even though I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that life begins at conception, I didn’t think miscarriage would feel like death, like the loss of a person who was known and loved. I thought miscarriage would feel more like a cruel joke - “You’re going to have a baby!.....Just kidding.” There was almost this idea that miscarriage was just the inability to have a baby, equivalent to the struggle of infertility. Something hard to fight through and try again.
But as I sat there on the couch faced with the reality of miscarriage, it didn’t feel as abstract as I had expected. I knew with confidence that this child was an important member of our family. They were known and loved by us, even if only for a short time on earth. In the midst of the grief, there was joy. Joy that one of our children was already experiencing eternal life with Jesus. They were already at the finish line of heaven, what we are all made for.
As I continued on this journey of grief mixed with joy, I vaguely remembered something St. Therese of Lisieux wrote about heaven. After some frantic googling I found what I was looking for. A short time before her death St. Therese wrote “My mission - to make God loved - will begin after my death.” I was so struck by this. She didn’t say her mission would continue in heaven, but that it would BEGIN in heaven. This great saint, this doctor of the church, said her mission was to BEGIN in heaven. Suddenly my perspective on my baby in heaven shifted. Not only was my little one experiencing the joy of heaven, maybe they were called there for a specific mission. Heaven wasn’t the end of their story. Their time on earth was so short, only days, but they still had value, still had a mission.
We named our baby Adrian Victory. When we were thinking of middle names I wanted a name that would proclaim the truth the Lord had revealed to us. This little life that was lost matters; this soul is strong, made for a heavenly mission. This soul was not a failed attempt at having a baby, but a victory.
