A Different Kind of Birthday

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I held him in my hands. He was perfect. He was so precious and tiny. My little brother Nathaniel Asher, "Nash, " was born on February the thirteenth of this year. Usually, people think of birthdays as the day a life began, but I don't.

My brother never cried when he was born. He never grasped my finger, never looked at me, and never took a breath in my arms. He never took a breath at all, but he lived. His life did not begin on his birthday; no one's life does. Birthdays do not mark the beginning of a unique genetic makeup that only one person will ever have. They do not mark the first beat of a heart. Birthdays do not mark the beginning of a soul's existence. Birthdays mark the day a person, who already exists, enters this world and leaves the environment of their mother's womb.

Nash had a different kind of birthday than most people. His life was already completed when he was born. He was never issued a birth certificate acknowledging his life, but I know that he lived.
I held him in the palm of my hand. Born at seventeen weeks gestation, he was only five inches long. I wondered how someone so small could take up so much room in my heart. I loved him very much, but I never got to tell him so. I never got to know who he was or what he was like; I just held his lifeless body and rocked him. I kissed his tiny forehead and held his delicate fingers. No one could ever convince me that Nash was not a person.

I wish I would have had the privilege of knowing him and seeing his personality. I wish I could have listened to him, made him laugh, and shared life with him. Although Nash was never known by a single person, his little life was important and God knows him. God is the one who formed him and fashioned his soul.

Fetuses are human beings. I am not a scientist, but it was not hard to see that my brother was not an undefined blob of disorganized cells, and I did not even need a microscope or magnifying glass to observe this. He had fingers, toes, ears, legs, arms, ribs, eyes, a nose, and even a tongue. He had everything we have. Fetuses are just a smaller version of normal-sized people. They are not disorganized random cells. They have all the same parts as us, and they are put together the same way. They are just much smaller and more delicate.

Nash taught me that birthdays are not the beginning. Life begins at conception. I will forever remember my brother's life although it ended before his birthday. I held him in my hand for only a few minutes, but I will always hold him in my heart. I am so thankful for the life of Nash, and I will always love him. Birthdays are days when we celebrate someone's life, but I'm learning that life should be celebrated every moment because life is a vapor.

"For you formed my inmost parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."Psalm 139:16