Baby Went With Angels

Some years ago at 4:12 in the afternoon…the soul of my beautiful and precious newborn son happily and peacefully left the hospital delivery room with two angels. He never saw me…his mother. But I saw him.

                                                                                                                                                                                                   In 1983  my husband and I  learned we were going to have our third child.  We already had a thirteen-year-old daughter and an eleven-year-old son. We were much surprised and cautiously pleased. 

All went well during the pregnancy.   Our church gave us a beautiful gift party.  And a sweet nursery was in place awaiting its little occupant.   But he was born and lived only twenty-two minutes.  Words can’t describe the emotional pain and heartache of giving birth to the little life and then watching him die. 

While the doctors and nurses worked to save his life,  I turned my head and saw two angels standing against the delivery room wall on my left. And, no, I’m not delusional! One was a young man whom I had seen years before in my garden. The other was there for my baby. They wore sackcloth and  they were visible only to me. I recognized my guardian angel since I had seen him briefly many years early. I recognized him. But the other was unfamiliar to me. They looked like flesh n blood young men but I could see the wall through them.  And they wore robes of sackcloth (burlap).  I cried out to them from my heart and said, ‘Do something. You are the only ones who can!!! ‘ But they would not meet my glance. Their countenances were sad and broken.  Their faces reflected the pain in my heart. I knew then that my baby would not survive! I knew, too, that God cared about my pain. I knew God sent heavenly messengers to escort the little soul back to God. So I turned my attention to the pain and reality of death. I was devastated!!    But because of the encounter, I understand the two angels sent to Sodom who looked like mere men. I understand how Abraham, Sarah, and others were visited by messengers of God who looked like ordinary men. Their presence brought me face to face with the realities of eternal life, of life beyond the physical body, and of Heaven.

As I watched the doctor’s frantically working to help him breathe, my heart qauestioned God saying, “Why are you doing this? I told the doctors I wouldn’t have the amniocentesis.  I would trust God like I did with the other two. What about mother (my mom was terminally ill with 24/7 nursing care at home)?   How will she stand seeing my hurt over this child?   Why did you give him to us if you were just going to snatch him back to yourself?”  Finally, after listening to my rantings, God spoke to my mind in a caring, loving, calm, and compassionate tone. The voice was male. He gently spoke His thoughts into my mind and said, “Carolyn, you said you trust me…..do you or don’t you?”    It was really just that simple! Do I trust Him or don’t I trust Him.  I lay there for what seemed like minutes of agony.  Then I knew in my heart what was True.  Benjamin was never ours.  He was God’s.  So were our other two children….they were God’s.  With an ashamed and still hurting heart I said, “God, he is yours.  You created him…not I.  Of the three you gave me….you are only keeping one.  That’s so like  You.  Yes, God, I trust you to raise your child.”  At that moment I released little Benjamin’s soul back to God.  But in the physical realm, as I lay on that table, in that place, I felt as though a bulldozer was tracking across my body…head to toe.  It was hard to breathe. I couldn’t feel the presence of Life.  The very air in the room seem to permeate with death…desolation…hopelessness. How could I come this close to death and survive?   I watched the doctor and nurses work until my little one stopped struggling for breath. I saw his little mouth close and watched him get still.  They brought him to my side for me to see.  His little eyes were closed.  I pulled a little hand out from the blanket where they had cuddled him.  I held the little hand and said, “Bless his little heart.”  I didn’t know until the autopsy that his ‘heart’ was indeed the problem.

Fifteen years earlier, in a vision from God, he had showed me the birth and death of  this child…years before he was conceived….but I could not understand until it happened.  In the vision I saw my newborn, still wet from birth…..facing towards me.   I would see him…but he would never see me.   Because as I was seeing him for the first time…face to face…his eyes were filled with the most beautiful city. A place of pure brightness, of bright clear blue sky, of glistening structures made from natural pearl…marble…colorful stones.    It happened just as I had seen in the vision!  There, laying on the delivery table, holding the hand of my dead baby……I failed to notice that the angels had left.  Mine was gone…he wasn’t needed any more.  And Benjamin’s was gone….he had carried my little one to the beautiful place.  They went in a moment….in the twinkling of the eye.   I was left with only his little broken earthy shell.

For two weeks, I wallowed in the most devastating pain ever experienced in the life.  I had tremendous support from those very close to me ….and from those more distant.  I knew Benjamin’s soul was alive with God.  But I couldn’t understand why God had created him.  Why He had taken him out of my world.  Why God was allowing me to encounter death at such close range.  As I began to heal, I would sit beside the little grave and cry out to God, “Why did you let  him  die?”                                                    

 He was born on August fifth.   A cornfield surrounded the small rural cemetery where we had placed him.  The corn was dried and ready for gathering.  But to me…the corn was just ‘dead.’   Kneeling at the little grave, I watched trails of tiny ants march about in the warm sun…..preparing for coming winter.  I felt so hurt that they were in the world and my baby was not.   A single bird would perch on nearby headstones and sing.  Why did they get to sing here  and my baby was taken out?

God listened patiently for weeks and weeks as I poured out my grief to him. Then on a late fall day, as the sun shown brilliantly, after the surrounding cornfields were gleaned, and the mountain breezes began to cool……God spoke to me again with His kind voice of compassion.  He simply said, again speaking His thoughts gently into my mind, “Carolyn, I didn’t let him die.  I LET HIM LIVE!”   Oh, what joy to hear the voice of God!  The voice itself brought healing to my broken heart.  I believed Him!  I knew it was true!  God had bestowed incredible mercy on Benjamin…and on me…his mother!  God had given me understanding that THE WORLD…HERE…IS DEATH…..the death promised Eve in Eden.  God had given Benjamin the gift of life…briefly here…eternally with Him.  The experience filled my spirit man with gratefulness for the gift of Life.  It filled my being with the ‘knowing’, by experience and encounter, that we truly move  ‘from death to life.’

From that day forward, I visited the graveside to often read these words on the little granite headstone:  ‘But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.Matt 19:14.’

Also, from that day forward, I thanked God for the song of a single bird perched on a headstone, for the trail of ants doing what they were created to do, for the life and death of seasons, and most of all…for the promise of eternal life for all who believe.   And I have greater understanding of what David knew::

Ps 23:4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.  5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.  6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.’