This post has been bouncing around in my head for quite a while. I am a member of two due date boards on BabyFit and many of the women that started out there with me have left due to the loss of their precious babies. My heart aches and my soul cries for them and all the women who have ever lost or ever will lose a child, be it an early miscarriage, a still birth or the death of an infant or toddler or even a grown child.
What I write here I write with love and kindness and a genuine need to bring comfort to those that need it. I hope that I do and that I do not offend or upset anyone with what I have to say.
In order to go forward I must start a little bit backwards. Also I must say here that I am in no way a learned scholar, I am not writing this down as the ‘law’, this is my interpretation of what I have been taught over the years.
In the Jewish faith the soul or the Neshoma must reach 7 levels of ‘enlightenment’, in order to do this we must use our earthly bodies, our lives to do mitzvot or good deeds, from being observant of religious laws, to praying, to being kind to others, to sacrificing things we love in order to help others we love. Each small (and large) good deed we do helps to elevate our souls. When we pass on, all the good deeds, the mitzvot, the kind actions that we have done during our lives helps to elevate our souls to the next level. As Jews we believe that if our soul still has a way to travel then our soul will wait and choose its parents and when that soul is reborn we must strive to be better, to do more, to help others more, to do more good deeds in order to elevate our souls even further.
And it is not just our own souls we elevate, by praying for others, while doing unselfish good deeds for others, by just loving others we help to elevate their souls too!
I know quite a few people, personally, that have lost children, early and late miscarriages as well as still births. When I questioned why these women lost their children, why they were given these miracles only to have them taken away so cruelly, I was told the following…
The Neshoma, the soul, has chosen its parents carefully, for the love that they will have for that child, for the prayers that will be said for the child, for the unquestioning faith they will have in that child. I was told that the reason that these children are taken away is that the love, kindness and faith that is given to them is all that that soul needs to elevate them to the final level. They have done so much in their previous lives, so much good, so many good deeds, been so full of faith and love and purpose that all their soul needed was the love and prayers of its parents and family in order for it to rise to its final purpose.
This comforted me, it still hurts when a child is taken away from us, it still burns and grief is still raw and powerful. But there is a comfort in knowing that perhaps there is a purpose for what has happened. That it is not just a random occurrence with no reason behind it.
Im not a particularly religious person, I dont keep Kosher or go to shul/synagogue very often, I have difficulty in accepting some of the laws my religion puts forward, but in this I find comfort and meaning.
I hope that these words are of some help and comfort to others. And if they are not just know that I feel for each and every one of the women out there who have experienced this devastating loss, my heart breaks for each and everyone.
