Echoes of Babies Never Heard

“Mamma, where are you?” I hear it in my thoughts like light feather snow around me. It drops into my silence and stirs memory sticky and sweet, of little hands that cup my face and turn me to look into crystal pools. Echoes of babies wrap me like gifts. I put them on shelves with “Do worms yawn?” and “Does God take baths?” I fold them away with memories of baby life inside me, hours of labor and competent delivering hands. “Does he who fashioned the ear not hear?” Psalm 94:9; NIV “Mamma, come find me,” I grasp at the vapor sound of her giggle and peer in the distant mirage of delighted smiles. I tuck its faint melody away in another crevice of my mind. “Does he who formed the eye not see?” Psalm 94:9; NIV Baby echoes wrap me like a blanket, mists of pasts warm me with having been, of little lives lived, grown and joying in them birthing generations anew. Whispers of long-ago baby kisses and little bear hugs wait for me through lonely days and silent nights. Souls I fed, hands I held, voices that chattered and arms that squeezed, all were gifts of God wrapped in skin, little humans who breathed, and laughed and lived. Each born for eternity and precious in His sight. But there are others; the never were, the never born and the never will be heard echoes of baby’s cries. I am shaken by hearts unmoved at throbbing life swathed in velvet skin, saddened by choices self-centered and morally depraved. I grieve little words never spoken and big thoughts never uttered. I mourn tiny toes never seen and little red lips smiling at ghosts in sleep. I am mystified by hands willing to carry angry placards but refuse to hold human life’s vulnerable softness. Echoes of babies never heard can’t be obscured by shameful cheers. The strike of a gavel can’t drown out their validity. “Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?” Psalm 94:9; NIV Listen. Can you hear them? The echoes of the babies never heard? God knows their names. He hears each one. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalm 139: 13-16; NIV