It’s a vast and terrible club to belong to: mothers who have babies in Heaven.
At one time, women didn’t feel the freedom to share much about such losses, especially miscarriage. But these days we’re encouraged to talk about and remember the little souls we never really knew.
The “Angel Baby” Problem
Once women began talking openly about miscarriage, infant loss, and rainbow babies, a problem emerged in our thinking—one that has spread far and wide thanks to social media.
Women began painting pictures in their minds of babies flitting around Heaven with angel wings. Fat little cherubs with rosy cheeks. Moms started calling them “angel babies” and wearing t-shirts that say “Mother of Angels” or “Angel Mommy.”
Somehow art, lore, and mythology combined with vague ideas of Heaven to produce this image in the minds of grieving mothers.
As usual, the world’s notions of comfort and peace pale in comparison to the true comfort that comes from knowing God’s truth.
What Babies in Heaven Actually Are
As a follower of Christ and a mother who suffered three miscarriages, I have a vastly different view of what my babies are experiencing.
People who die don’t earn angel wings.
Angels are completely different created beings, separate from humans and without the same experience of knowing God. The Bible tells us that angels love to look at the ways Jesus rescues human beings from our sin (1 Peter 1:12).
Piper writes that angels watch the spiritual drama unfold, aware that they are outsiders, having never sinned or experienced salvation through Christ. Angels play a special role in the heavenly realms, but they were not created in God’s image. Nor are they objects of His fatherly affection and salvation.
Human beings, on the other hand, are invited to enter the place Jesus Himself has prepared.
This means there is a plan for our babies. They are living a very real present and have a very real future—not as fat little cherubs with no direction or purpose, not as mere cutesy decorative elements of Heaven, but as real souls with real relationships with the King of Kings.
