I recently had a conversation with a friend who had had a miscarriage, and she wondered what might have been going on with the soul of her deceased child. I have extracted the important parts from that conversation, and turned it into a readable article. The initial premise is an understandable one: ‘What possible mission can be accomplished by someone who has not even lived a life?’
On a spiritual level, the reasons why some babies and small children only live very short lives are not always connected to ‘mission’. There seem to be many, many different reasons for a short life; it’s not always the same reason for everyone, and so the brief life is often nothing to do with mission.
I sat down and asked God how to find an answer to the moving question of what happens to young children or even infants who die prematurely; I really didn’t know where to turn to in order to look for an answer. The answer, upon asking God, came very quickly: to ask other people like me.
I remember my own existence in heaven, before I came to earth. I remember it being a place of infinite happiness and pure love. It was filled with light, and I felt the Presence of a Great Being around me. There are a small number of children who, like me, remember their heavenly life before birth. These incidents have come to be known as “Pre-Birth Experiences”, and the children are called, “PBE-Experiencers”. So I am a PBE-Experiencer myself.
I have always treasured my memory of heaven. Over many years, I have read about a number of stories from children who remember their existence pre-birth, and so it is to other people like me – other children like me – to whom I have turned to see if they could provide an answer as to why some babies and small children have only a short life.
From re-reading their experiences, that’s when I realised it wasn’t anything to do with mission.
What feels like a tragic, unfinished life to us on this earthly, mortal side of the veil, is often viewed from a heavenly soul’s perspective as a brief, intentional dip into physical reality. Some PBE accounts suggest that some souls might only desire to experience the very baseline elements of being human – such as the brief sensation of having a physical body, the sound of a mother’s voice, or the feeling of physical touch – thus finishing the brief cycle of their existence before returning to God’s heavenly light. That’s all they wanted to do in coming to earth – it was their choice.
A rarer but highly fascinating theme in PBE memory research involves souls who experience intense anxiety, or a sudden shift in perspective right on the very threshold of being born. In other words, some souls try to come to earth, but they suddenly find the prospect of mortal life too scary, and they change their minds, and God agrees to retrieve them and bring them back to their heavenly home.
Yet others simply want to see someone they knew and loved in heaven just one more time – to help their earthly parent remember, and therefore know that that love was already present there in heaven.
In the case of women who miscarry, or whose children die immediately at birth, I suspect that the souls of these children had already known their mothers in heaven, and they loved one another there. The mother had willingly chosen to come to earth to do what God asked of them, but it’s possible that their children were too scared to accompany them. So the souls of these children may have come through for a very brief moment, possibly to tell their mothers something like, “I just wanted you to always remember that I loved you in heaven, Mommy”. That might be all that they wanted to do, before returning home to God.
I am 100% certain such mothers will see their children once again when they have completed their mission on earth, and they are called home. The innocent who pass are always seated immediately at God’s right hand, and that’s where their children are now.
Ultimately, researchers like Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia DOPS, alongside other PBE pioneers, note that children who remember the other side view death with far less fear than adults do. To a soul freshly arrived from the heavenly realm of light and love, returning there after only a short time is not viewed as a tragedy or an end, but simply as a swift return home to God’s embrace, and a new beginning in God’s immediate Presence.
Regarding when we receive our mission: I get the sense that God has particular things that need doing on earth in pursuit of the fulfilment of God’s Kingdom. Souls then volunteer for those things – but God doesn’t run heaven like a communist collective, where you have to do something whether you like it or not. We always have a choice. I once read in the writings of one Experiencer, that God selects only the strongest and most resilient souls to carry out God’s will on earth. So basically, we volunteer first, and then God chooses the strongest of us for a specific job; as part of our free will, we get to choose the job we sign up for – we get a strong say in the matter.
As for how long all that is before we come to earth, you have to remember that in heaven, there is no concept of time or space. So receiving our mission is a process, and once God has completed the selection process, we are ready to come to earth, once a suitable child is found to be born into – and that could be at any point in Time (God doesn’t need to wait, because YHVH is timeless, and all Time is one for YHVH).
According to some Experiencers, we even get to choose our parents. I sense that I was able to choose my grandparents, because it was mainly my grandparents who raised me.
Sometimes a soul might request a short time on earth in order to do something else of their own (send love, feel mortal human touch, etc), which has nothing to do with a mission. So YHVH, in God’s compassion and kindness, allows the soul their request.
I also get the sense that coming to earth is the main way for a soul to be enabled to ascend to the highest heaven (and thus find union with God, be seated at God’s right hand, know God’s Mind, and as the psalms put it, ‘enter the inner Council of YHVH’, the realm of the archangels, the seraphim, and YHVH’s highest holiness). Out of compassion and love for these souls, God allows them a short while on earth, so that they can then ascend to God’s highest heaven afterwards. So when mothers who have lost children in childbirth return to our heavenly home, their children will already be in the highest heaven with God.
As for the oldest age children can decide they want to return to heaven: going on the writings of PBE-Experiencers, I get the sense that it is probably up to the age of two. Some say that it is around the age of two that your soul becomes ‘anchored’ to your body. Others say that between two and seven, some children are still able to vaguely remember heaven. Others, like me, remember it for life. The longer a child remains alive before passing, the more likely it is they have an easily fulfilled mission.
As a closing note: I understand that some people get really worried and anxious when they cannot figure out what their specific mission in life is. I try to reassure such individuals when I encounter them. The primary mission of us all is first to seek God’s will, and live according to YHVH’s principles and values. By doing this, we will be fulfilling our overall mission anyway, even if we are never able to figure out what it is. Sometimes it is simply to touch the lives of various individuals around us in a positive way, and often you might not ever be aware of the good you have done.