Heaven's demographics

One of the blessings (and I use that word knowing full well what it's import is) of losing a child, as I have done, is that it opens your world up to all the others who are suffering in a similar way to you. There's a lovely verse about ministering out of the comfort we have each received. It describes so well the way things seem for me at the moment.

God seems to be bringing these people into my life so that I can encourage them - share my story and frustrations, listen to theirs, and then encourage them in whatever way I can. This is a blessing. To help others, to make a difference in their lives - there is nothing better. (Except maybe sitting cuddling Janel on my lap and smelling her hair. If I could bottle that smell and sell it I'd be a multi-millionaire overnight!)

I know so many women (and couples) now who have fertility problems of one sort or another - from the seemingly easy-to-cure problem of not having a partner to the almost impossible-to-cure-so-only-possibility-is-to-have-IVF-and-even-that-may-not-work problem. All of them have experienced the longing for a child that only those for whom the blessing of children has been denied can truly understand. Many of them have also experienced the heart-wrenching pain of losing a child. Some of them have lost their baby in the first few weeks of the pregnancy; others, like me, at the end.

Over the weekend I met up with one such friend, who recently had a miscarriage, and we shared our frustrations. Our situations are completely different, because I fall pregnant at the drop of a hat, but have immense difficulty in bringing that pregnancy to full term. She, on the other hand, has immense difficulty falling pregnant, but no problems bringing her pregnancy to full term. Yet, our frustrations are so similar, and our obsession with having another child is identical.

After she left, I was thinking about all of us in this fertility/ child-bearing issues boat, and how crazy we must sometimes seem to those on the outside looking in. We definitely are obsessed, and yet, it's a completely sane obsession, if that makes sense.

Then I got to thinking about all of our missing children - the ones we've lost along the way. There are a lot of them. As I started counting all of them it struck me that heaven's demographics must be very different to ours here on earth. There must be a lot of babies and children, and a lot of elderly, with very few people in between. And isn't that just the way it should be? Who loves little kids more than grandparents? So all these precious little missing angels of ours are up in heaven, being spoilt rotten by all these grandparent types! And that made me smile. There's a certain economy about that which makes an odd sort of sense.