Letter to a miscarried child

My dear brother or sister,

Though you were conceived and began to grow into a human body, you never really got to experience what life is like here. Maybe you are in a better place now — maybe a neutral place — hopefully not a worse place. People speculate about the afterlife here, but the Bible (God’s book(s) to us) is surprisingly quiet on the subject, so I do not have a good guess as to the state of your separated soul. One day, all our bodies will resurrect; then, you will know what it’s like to live in a body. I think, though, that there are aspects of this human life on earth which will not plague our final, eternal state in (God willing) heaven. So, here are some things to give you a better idea of what you are missing out on (for better or worse):

1. Sometimes, it is hard to know what is right and wrong. Most of the time, though, we know what is right, and the hard part is sticking to it. There is a mystery here which I do not believe anybody has explained: we often know what is good for us and do the opposite. 
2. Earth and the universe are full of good and beautiful things, but there are some horrible things mixed in. Most of the bad stuff is our fault, but, still, a lot of it is just the way the world is. Some look at the good things and try to grab them and accumulate them. Others look at the bad things and despair and raise presumptuous questions about why there is evil at all. Neither of these approaches is much good. It is best to smile at the good, cry at the evil and try to make others smile instead of cry, while staying focused on reaching that place where all is good forever.
3. Our bodies place incredible demands on us but also enable us to do some equally incredible things — like run a marathon or eat cheesecake or bring forth new life (usually successfully, though regrettably not in your case). The immediacy of our senses makes it hard to devote ourselves to the non-material things which we feel (though not in the same way, not with our bodies) to be more important, especially since we are born with a twisted desire to let our bodies control us. (This twisted desire you will not experience in your resurrected body). For example, many struggle to profess belief in an invisible God for which, they claim, there is little “evidence.” Well, as you must know, God permeates all things physical and does not leave us stranded in our bodies but sent his Son as an example for us to imitate if we wish to perfect our human nature. God engages our bodies most beautifully in Mass. 

That is basically the gist of it. Here are some more things for fun: 

1. We spend about a third of our life asleep. If we wake up at the right time, we will have just been thinking of something. Actually, it is less like thinking and more like imagining. We have almost no control over it and no ability to predict what we will imagine. Our minds play movies for us every night. It is a strange thing called dreaming. 
2. We have figured out how to organize sounds to communicate not only ideas (language), but also emotions (music). Do the angels sing in heaven (I pray that you, in your innocence, have made it there), or are they just saying that so we are good? Music helps us a lot here. We play it to celebrate, to pray, to grieve, to pass the time. If we listen to one song enough times, we can start to hear it in our heads even if it is not playing. 
3. There is such a thing as good pain. Sometimes it feels good to cry. Actually, most of the time it feels good to cry. There must be something other than the pain or sadness that determines whether the underlying feeling is good or bad — something like hope versus despair, or the belief that the pain will be worth something. 
4. When we look toward the future, we project our current perspective onto our future self, failing to account for changes in outlook. Today appears the same color as yesterday, but last week appears a slightly different hue. Some things change a lot; some change a little; some not at all. It is hard to predict what falls where. We think we know what we will want in a month or a year, but then the color of our desires changes and we end up looking for something slightly or totally different. We are not made for long-term planning. 
5. Happiness comes more readily from gratitude toward what we do have than from amassing more and more things. This would be the key that unlocks a lifetime of bliss, but we do not always know how to access the key. It is hard to make ourselves be grateful for something. 

It is hard to say how much of this you will experience once you (God willing) get your glorified body. Like I said, we do not know much about the final state we hope for. Well, know that we have missed your presence here, but hope that you are with your Maker. We hope to join you soon, but not too soon, because we have a lot we would like to see and do and experience here first. It’s not a bad place — quite wonderful, actually. I dare say you may have missed out in some respects. Ah, no matter. Farewell. We could use your prayers too. 

R.J.T.