Question:
I suffered a miscarriage recently. While I am thankful
for the beautiful children I have, I still feel a sense of loss for
the child that I will never know. Is there some kabbalistic explanation
for why these things happen?
Answer:
Im sorry to hear of your loss. Its understandable
that you are left wondering what could have been, in what seems to be a case of
a potential unfulfilled.
But kabbalistically, theres no such thing as what could have been.
Every soul has its own flightpath. Why some souls spend longer on this earth,
some shorter, and some never make it is a mystery that only G-d can solve. We
can only suggest a possible explanation, by exploring what Kabbalah
teaches us about the souls journey.
The soul has a pre-history that goes back a long way. There is a storehouse
of souls in heaven, where from time immemorial every soul that was ever born or
will ever be born waits for its time to come down. When a mother down here
conceives, up there a soul is summoned from the storehouse and sent down to
begin its mission. The Messiah can only come once that storehouse is empty, and
every soul has been sent on its path.
It is a scary and traumatic experience for a soul to leave its divine source
and descend to this lowly world. The materialism and darkness of our universe is
completely foreign to this pure and G-dly spark. In order to ease the souls
descent into this world, it experiences a transitory stage, it enters a realm
that is neither heaven nor earth the mothers womb. The womb is a haven where
the soul enjoys the warmth and protection of its mother, the support and love of
its father, without being tainted or corrupted by the world outside. At this
stage, the soul does not yet enter the body, but rather hovers around it. It is
still free from the limitations of the physical. This is an intermediate step,
in order to soften the shock of arriving in the world beyond the womb.
But some souls are never ready to leave. They are too sublime, too pure, too
sensitive to be thrust into the harsh realities of worldly existence. It would
be simply too cruel to plunge such a gentle soul into a body, to enter a world
polluted by evil and selfishness. So instead of descending further, these souls
float back to where they came from the higher and holier realms where they
feel at home. Perhaps they will come down some other time. Or perhaps their
mission is fulfilled, having come down far enough.
For the mother, this is a painful loss. The future she anticipated for her
child did not eventuate. But is it a miscarriage? Miscarriage implies that
something went wrong, that a mistake happened; but we cannot know if perhaps
this was the destiny of that soul.
This does not in any way diminish the loss that you have suffered. Your pain
is real and justified, and your wounded heart will take time to heal. To the
cry, Why me?, these may seem to be just empty words. But at moments of
spiritual clarity, at times when your thoughts can overpower your emotions,
maybe you can sense that in a way you have been honoured, to have hosted such a
holy and precious soul in your womb. That sacred time you shared with your
little unborn child can never be taken away from you.