Sometimes my two-year-old still smells like a newborn. When he’s so deep in sleep his eyelids are fluttering and I put my nose to his hair and catch the remaining wafts of infancy, rising like fresh-tilled earth and crocuses.
But those moments are rare and even when he was an infant he was so independent it was hard to believe he let me hold him within me for nine months.
And my womb still aches. Since the miscarriage of Madeline, we miss her here on earth. While I rejoiced this past week with the Duke and Dutchess, I mourned too, for my own loss.
Because every baby is royalty. Every baby is dreamed of and designed by a heavenly king whose genes flow through their chromosomes and DNA and even though I only held Madeline within me for eight weeks she was no less real to me than the newly-named His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge.
Prince George’s life was celebrated from the moment of conception and his existence was more than a few cells because of his destiny, one that promised a royal line and a throne and an earthly kingdom.
My own boys do not have a throne in their future but they still have a royal name to live up to and a father whose crown outshines any mortal’s.
Every life, if redeemed by Christ and his sacrifice, has a spiritual lineage and a royal destiny and yet, not every life is celebrated and at what point do we stop hearing the heartbeat? At what point do we stop believing in a fetus’ ability to bring bread to a world that is bent over and hungry?
Prince George was named long before this past week. He was named the moment he was woven together in Kate’s womb and no name is lost to the father. God writes the name in large sprawling letters in his book of life and the days of a child’s existence are known even as the number of hairs on his head.
Life is sacred and we may try to end it. We may try to end it up until nine months here in Canada, but nothing is too deaf for redemption’s song. The song of a Savior who holds the book of life and those names with their large sprawling letters and his is a lineage which wraps the broken world tight.
Madeline lives, even though she died, and death cannot wipe out a royal line. Abortion and disease have no power over the promise of a child and so I stand and celebrate Prince George and the hope his life offers, not because of this world, but because of the next.
Because we have a father who reigns and we have a destiny that is worth celebrating.
So, for our sons and daughters who live, and for those who’ve been lost, we stand and applaud, the hope that is a child.
*Linking with Lisa-Jo today, as her word is “Broken”
(The blog will be silent next week as I visit with family and friends here in Ontario; the week following will be guest posts. May you all find rest in the span of summer’s arms. e.)