Coming as Babies

Believing what I believe about our eternal natures – believing that, before we came to earth, we were mature spirits – capable of choice and great wisdom and intelligence – I sometimes find myself looking at my babies and children and thinking something sort of like . . . “What on EARTH?”

Hahah. It sounds terrible. It’s just, with several of my children, I have felt a connection and awareness of their mature and noble spirits – before they were born. And the disparity between that . . . and the helpless little babies they come to me as – babies who can’t even talk and, the minute they can pick up anything, start trying to shove things like bark chips into their mouths . . . just seems a bit comical. Almost ridiculous!

I can just picture us up there – with all our reasoning and wits about us – looking down on earth before coming and saying, as we chewed on our lip a bit skeptically, “Soooo . . . I’m just going to . . . start out as one of THOSE, then? . . . You’re sure about this? It seems like they do a lot of . . . I don’t know . . . just drooling and trying to crawl cluelessly off of beds and stuff. . . .”

It does seem a bit humorous to me on occasion. Almost as if I don’t recognize my children in this funny little state of being.

But, this morning, when Summer woke up, Mike mixed up a bottle and carried it, along with Summer, into me in bed. I tucked one arm under her, wrapped the other securely around her middle and let my cheek press to her forehead while I half-slept for a moment longer. Her little sister – the one who is currently growing a little body for herself – seemed to wake too; and all the while that I snuggled Summer – listening to her quite little swallowing sounds – I could feel kicking and rolling about from this new one coming.

And, at that moment, like at a thousand moments like it; it seemed the most incredibly beautiful and perfect way imaginable for a mortal life to go about starting. Maybe we loved . . . I don’t know . . . in many better ways before we came here – before our natures had to take on an element of fallen mortalness to them. But THIS? Could we ever ever in billions of millenia have learned to love like this? Like we learn to love by having a helpless, drooling, bark-eating little baby in our care?

I don’t know. Maybe. But, if they had any say in the matter, I sure appreciate my children agreeing to come as babies. “OK. Fine. I’ll go that way. I’ll struggle my way through ABCs and learning the ‘pincer grasp’ so my darn Mom can learn amazing things about love.”

Thank you, babies and children of mine.

The End.

(And yah, it seems like a baby picture of some sort would be good here. But I haven’t taken any since yesterday’s blog posts except for that one with my cell phone of Penny at the park last night. So . . . make it somehow “fit” this post in your mind.)