Why Am I Silent?

Here are my boys. The word “here” is an adverb indicating the position or place of my children. In this case, the sentence is pointing to the picture, yet it gives a sense of proximity or closeness. “Are” functions as the verb and is a form of being. It tells us that my boys exist. The adjective “my” describes the boys. They are mine and belong to me although they are not my property. The subject of the sentence and the word to which every other word points is “boys”. This word describes something about them. It identifies them as male and it is generally used to denote male humanity. It is plural so that you would understand that I have more than one boy.

A simple sentence. Here are my boys. I can write this sentence because it is true. The photograph is a testimony to its validity. This is not fanciful imagination. These boys exist and they are mine. They exist because I married a woman whom I love very much. They are the product of our love as a gift and reward from God. They are alive. They live with Marie and I. We feed them, dress them, teach them, clean them, love them, shelter them, protect them. They are ours and we face a responsibility because they exist. They are growing as any normal boy would. They learn new words, motor skills, patterns of behavior, how to respond to stimuli, interaction - the list could go on and on. They are becoming men.

From the moment each of my precious boys was conceived he was a living being. There is no shred of scientific reasoning that can make this untrue. My boys have a life that began at the moment they were conceived. That life will continue until it is terminated by some force either external or internal. At some point, their bodies will cease to function and they will die. This is a fact, just as their living is a fact.

My boys are present with me because they lived through the process of growing that took place inside Marie’s womb to prepare their bodies for the elements of our world outside of the womb. This process is called gestation. Gestation is not prior to life. Gestation is life. This is also a fact. When a baby ceases to live in the womb, we say that the baby died. The baby died because the baby had life. Marie and I have lost a baby to death in the womb. We will never know this baby, nor will we ever see his or her face in this life. We will not watch him grow or be funny or run. We will never teach him anything. Yet he was a living child who belonged to us. His life was real for as long as he had it. Some strange providence of God brought his short life to an end. We never even saw him.

Millions of mothers face the same sort of thing. Many of them experience just what Marie and I experienced. Their babies die while within their womb of a nutritional deficiency or some malfunction of the gestation process. Maybe their organs were formed in such a way that they could not sustain life. For whatever reason, these mothers lose something that would have in time become more precious than they would have ever imagined.

Other women, also numbering in the millions, choose to have the life of their children terminated while within the womb. In almost any other instance, society calls the practice of ending a life murder. Yet we have given it a clinical name with clinical surroundings. We have sterilized it and called it medicine or even more philosophically, freedom of choice.

It is my firm conviction that many of the women who enter into this process of killing their children do so because they do not understand exactly what will take place. They do not understand that this baby inside is a life. They do not yet realize what the taking of that life will mean. Murder is a complicated action to deal with on any level. It being legal does not necessarily make it right. A murder like this would mean terrible things to someone with even a glimmer of conscience.

To my shame, in my past I have enjoyed horror movies and movies that depict graphic violence. Some of my favorites were where the violence looked real instead of stylized and glamorized. Yet, even with all the images that fill my memory - things that I put there - I am unable to watch a video depicting the violence done to the unborn without breaking down into tears. The factor that makes this so emotionally unbearable is the innocence attached to these little ones. They are in the womb and have not yet done anything good or bad. They are the same children who will be, within a matter of months, smiling and crawling and playing. To think of them having their peaceful place in the womb violently invaded and having unspeakable things done to their infant bodies - things that we would call animalistic if done to an adult - brings me to a point of incomprehensible grief.

Just this afternoon I was watching Charles clap his hands. He started doing that yesterday. He doesn’t even make a sound yet because mostly he’s just doing the motion and never actually hitting his palms together. Marie said that he waved bye-bye to Connor today as Connor was leaving to go swimming with some friends. My son is growing and learning because he is a life that began 18 months ago deep inside my wife’s body. By the grace of God, Marie and I have been given the knowledge and understanding of what that life means. Now we are simply enjoying the fruit of the miracle that happened all those months ago. Now we can make a simple statement that means so much in a world that has gone mad.

Here are my boys.

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