OUr instict to cry out sets the stage for love

Our first baby, Elliott, didn't cry when he entered the world. He didn't have enough breath left in his lungs to cry.

I didn't know at the time just how important it was for him to cry out in that moment. I didn't know at the time how much the healthy trajectory of a baby's life depends on his mom hearing that cry and responding to it in love. I didn't realize at the time that a day later, when his mom showed up to the NICU, and that baby DID cry, I didn't realize that the greatest miracle wasn't that he was screaming tones of life, it was that his mom was there to respond to them.

We all come into this world with nothing but the instinct to cry out when our lives feel at risk. And in the early days of a baby's life, everything about their world makes them feel like their life is at risk.

Hunger, bad gas, sleepiness, a dirty diaper - to a baby who has never experienced any of these things before - all of those things make them feel like they are experiencing their latest life or death moment.

And so they cry out.

In the earliest days of a baby's life, they cry out with the question - am I safe? Sometimes that question cries out all night long... It's not a question on a baby's mind or in her heart, it's just a question their instincts for survival beg them to cry out with.

A mom hears the question crying out and she rises from her bed in exhaustion, stumbles into the baby's dark room and picks him up. She holds him and says, I'm here now. It's going to be Ok.

She hears the question - am I safe? She answers it with - you are loved. In those earliest moments of life, a baby's instincts for survival are being transformed into a heart and a mind wired for love.

A connection built on crying and hearing.

I remember one of the early days sitting in that NICU in North Carolina. I'd noticed there weren't many other moms there for the babies lined up and down that unit in rows of wires and incubators. I asked one of the nurses, "where are all the other moms?"

She told me many of those babies would never see their moms. Their moms were struggling with addictions or other challenges in their lives that left them incapable of responding to their baby's cries.

I confess, over 13 years ago, that conversation sadly made me angry at the moms. It left me judgmental and full of blame. Today, though, that conversation makes my heart break for them.

I've come to believe we're too often a culture that finds it easier to call a mom unfit than being a culture that does everything it can to give a mom the resources she needs to be fit. I think some days we hear a mom's drug use as a cry of irresponsibility and neglect, and not a cry for help. A cry that maybe wasn't answered with love when that mom was a baby? Maybe?

I often hear us bemoan a world that isn't connected enough in love. Yet, we do far too little to support the foundation of that connection. We do far too little to make sure every mom who wants to respond to "am I safe" with "you are loved" has every opportunity to do so.

My boys are blessed. They have a mom who has always responded to their cries with love. Always. Just like her mom responded to her cries in love. And her mom's mom to hers in love.

The one thing I think they all had in common - they all had a village to support them when answering those cries got hard.

I think every mom deserves a village. I think if we're a culture that truly longs for a world built on the foundation of love, then we should place no priority higher than BEING that village. No matter what the cost.

For me personally, I'm grateful I had a mom who answered that call in love. She put me on a path to truly knowing and feeling and believing with a faith that surpasses all understanding - that when someone hears our cry, that is the foundation of love.