The Rosebud

     I have mentioned before that I have wanted a grandchild for a long time. It seemed like the least my children could do for me after all the trouble I went through raising them. Still I considered it a mixed blessing when my Christmas gift from my son and his fiance was a sonogram of the baby they were expecting. Babies are wonderful, of course, but we had raised our children to know God's way was marriage first, then kids. I was disappointed because the baby's father had also been my baby and I had better dreams for him than the choices he made for himself. But I was not nearly as disappointed then as I was a month later when he called to say the baby had miscarried. I had called the baby Peanut and the sonogram sat on my nightstand so it was the first and last thing I saw everyday.
     Though many of the women I know had miscarried, I had never lost a baby. I knew from scripture that babies go to heaven, but I hadn't before thought deeply about what form these unborn babies have there. The Bible doesn't say. Though I do not take my theology from books and movies, I was intrigued by the story in "Heaven's For Real" where the little boy who saw heaven was being hugged by a girl he didn't know. She said she was his sister who died in their mommy's tummy. She looked like his other sister and her age fit the years since the miscarriage. Surely God would not leave these tiny ones in embryonic form where they could not experience the wonders of heaven. I have asked the Lord that when I die, Peanut is one of the first people I see. Though I call the baby Peanut, I think of  him/her as a rosebud.

                                                            The Rosebud

In God’s garden, there is a place

where tiny rosebuds bloom--

the babies, not yet fully formed,

who leave the earth before they’re born,

gone early from the womb.

My grandchild is among them now,

a rosebud picked too soon,

just partly formed, but wholly loved

and when we meet in heaven above

I know I’ll see the bloom.

To Peanut--miscarried 1/21/15