BitterSweetLife

Babies Starving for God, Interrupted Spiritual Growth



A few days ago I heard one of the saddest things I’ve heard in awhile. I was learning about something called Inter-Uterine Growth Restriction (IUGR), which is a disease that affects infants in their mother’s wombs. What happens is: the connection between the mother and baby gets seriously impaired, that is, the placenta doesn’t deliver nutrients to the baby as it’s intended to. The baby is inside the womb, going hungry.

Once this condition is detected, a premature delivery is necessary to ensure that the child comes out alive. The good news is that IUGR babies often, even usually, make it out. The sad news is how.

The nurse I talked with described IUGR babies as looking like “old men.” They have very large heads that wobble above scrawny, malnourished bodies. These day-old ancients are ravenously hungry and very irritable. They eat and cry, eat and cry, eat and cry, big heads sagging over wrinkled parchment skin. It seems like anyone who saw one of these babies would want to cry too.

For a little while, we were afraid Aidan might be an IUGR baby. Now that we know he was (and is) just small (4 lbs., 8 oz.), we have a lot to be grateful for.

But the picture of the IUGR baby is sticking with me.

It seems like a metaphor for something awful, the kind of thing you might dream about once and then never forget even though you tried. I don’t think I’ll forget. What the big-headed, ravenous baby represents to me is something that is, I think, horrible.

I picture a person of any age who is starving because of a birth connection, an intended bond, that should be there but isn’t. Sometimes the person doesn’t know what is wrong, doesn’t know why he is ravenous and unhappy. He just knows that something is missing, that his life seems too light, like it could crumple or wilt at the least impact, that there are million unanswered questions.

Like the baby who looks like an old man, this person’s spirit has aged prematurely. The heart has dry wrinkles instead of pink skin. The mind wobbles under its own weight, and the spirit does not support it. The intellect races but does not arrive at answers. How can a person reason his way to truth when he is starving?

The IUGR baby has become a metaphor for the person who has lost her vital connection to her God, the Creator who was intended to carry her to term, feed her all the way, and see that her head was aligned correctly with her body. God is the one who fleshes us out and makes us whole and integrated—not just alive but alive and well.

I guess the IUGR baby brings home to me the nature of the disease—aching unhappiness and spiritual withering—that takes place when a person’s connection with God is lost. When the spirit is out of commission, some other organ has to rule one's life. Often it's the head. This makes for big-headed, starving babies.

I have the sad sensation that there are IUGR babies walking across the street, going to work, driving to the game, all around me. Somehow, they need to get reconnected, they need to get strong and grow up. If Christ didn’t have a love for us, we’d all be walking, talking, crying, starving babies.