Unanswered Cry, Breaking Heart

Recently I visited my newest grandchild for 10 days.  He was about 5 weeks old…still technically a newborn.  All babies cry…it is normal.  Those who don’t are either weak or sick.  They cry because they have no other way to communicate their needs.

One day as I held him and tried to comfort him I told him that his crying was “breaking my heart.”  I should not have said this in front of his two year-old sister, who got a horrified look on her face and said, “He is breaking Grandma’s heart!”  I tried to explain to her that I was just trying to say that it made me sad to see him cry, and that I was sad when she cried too.

But….I, of course, knew that his mother was near-by and was available to nurse him, if it was hunger that was causing the crying.  We would change his diaper, rock him, walk the floor with him and do whatever else we could to comfort him.

What really “breaks my heart” is the knowledge that there are many babies and children in this world right now, who are crying, and whose cries will not be responded to by a loving parent.

There are parents who are not loving, who really didn’t want this child.

There are parents who are self-absorbed.  The child is not their priority.  Perhaps, video games or their cell phone or drugs or going out to drink are more important.

There are loving parents who cannot respond.  Perhaps they are lying dead in the rubble of Aleppo or some other war-torn spot.  The child will cry over and over until too weak to cry and may die unheeded and uncomforted.

A few years ago, a single mother in my city died in her apartment shortly after giving birth.  She had no local family, and apparently, no friends.  No one checked on her after her discharge from the hospital.  Her baby starved to death before anyone found them.  It made me sick at heart to think of people in adjacent apartments who might have heard the crying baby and just assumed it was normal fussing, rather than realizing it was a desperate cry for life itself.  Compassionate people, who would have helped, drove by on the busy street in front of the apartment oblivious to the need.

I cannot solve the problems in Syria or Africa or even in my own city.  I can only deal with the needs that God allows me to see…the crying He allows me to hear, but there are times when the burden of the crying children in this world weighs on my heart and “breaks” it.