Baby Love

I never used to pay any mind to babies. I had no clue how often they ate, how to change a diaper, when they crawled, walked, talked, whatever. For the most part I tried to manage polite avoidance of the species because I might make it cry or not support its neck or say something idiotic in an attempt to make it smile.

But. Winter melted to spring, skin stretched around my burgeoning middle, and my heart changed. I found myself knowing I would lay down my life for someone I didn't even know yet. I found I was just crazy about him - just crazy about every little detail of him: where his fingers were, what his ears felt like, what his head smelled like. Before I ever knew Julian, I loved him.

I've started stealing rocking time with him these nights, pulling him up from the crib at ten or eleven ostensibly to change his diaper. All during the day now he is twisting out of my arms to explore, so I change his diaper in the night and rock him sleepy for a few minutes, combing his fine hair with my fingers, feeling each vertebrae down his back, breathing against his sighing tummy. I never knew a love like this before having a child - a love that is infatuation without cause, only that he is himself, the only unique himself.

As I rocked him in the dark tonight, I wondered, 'Is this really how God feels about me - about all those who bear his image? Just like I feel about Julian?' 

At first, I dismissed these questions with a 'no.' I realized why.

Because if the answer is yes, what anguish our Father must feel, it's impossible! With the sickness and terror that befall his children in this world every day - no parent could endure that again and again. I only begin to imagine him sending his son to death before I have to stop that completely; as a parent now, it's too horrible even to imagine.

But he must know this love - for it's impossible to come across a love that he did not author. He doesn't just have all love - he is love. He is with Julian what I can only attempt to be in my better moments.

But if God does love us like I love Julian, how can he bear to let the suffering go on? Why is his triumphant son not come again already to end this?

I know this is a mystery that I cannot solve. I see two choices: denying God or his love, or knowing the anguish he faces as Father of all of us and trusting him anyway. The trusting is a precipice. Can I really trust someone who would continue to let neglect and torture and cancer and death happen to his children?

I do. But not for a reason I can formulate to argument; it is only because I know him.