The last several years have been challenging for me. Honestly, more downs and twists than level and straight roads. Not all bad, not life is utterly miserable, just the kind of hard we don’t like to face daily. And if you’re like me, and my husband, you may have especially come to take the retirement years as serene and peaceful, most days being routine and trouble free.

We’ve talked a bit about that recently, how we both used to deal with multiple complex and often difficult problems daily. This was not only in our jobs, but also in the daily crush of busy family life, raising three boys, with all that entailed. The care not only of the family, but the home, the cars, the appliances, etc. all needing to function, and many days, one or more failing to do that.

So, when you face more peaceful, less busy days, days without struggle, hard decisions, necessary running all over town, well, you get complacent. Expectant. Spoiled, I’d even suppose.

Last week I had a check up at a women’s clinic. Something quite unexpected happened to me, and it made such an impression that I’ve reflected on it for days now.

I got to see a few brand new parents come in with their babies in strollers. The tiny babes were precious, but if you can believe it, for once, the parents stole the show, and I found myself only glancing at the beautiful babies.  My attention returned again and again to the young mothers and fathers in the office for what I’m confident was mom’s 6 week postpartum check up.

The lovely young ladies had a glow. Everyone says pregnant women have a glow, but I’ve always thought if they did it was a sickly green. Not so these new young mothers. They really, actually did have a bright glow about them. They were intent, brilliantly happy and smiling, and their unconscious attitude relayed the fact that they had just accomplished their part in one of God’s great miracles. The conception to birth to thriving, well loved infant, the old, ancient story of the two who become one, and then the birth of a family.

But really, as much as I had intended to leave the story with the intangible reason for the glow, I think it is more.

Have you ever heard of fetal microchimerism?

Here is some information that AI gave me, all things I have been reading for several years in a number of sources.

• Lifelong Persistence: Fetal cells can migrate into the mother’s bloodstream as early as 6 weeks into pregnancy and can remain in her tissues and organs for decades—or even a lifetime.
• Found Throughout the Body: These cells have been discovered in numerous maternal organs and tissues, including the heart, brain, liver, lungs, skin, thyroid, and bone marrow.
• Stem-Cell-Like Properties: Fetal cells often act like progenitor or stem cells, adapting and integrating into the surrounding tissue. For example, they have been observed near or at sites of injury, such as C-section scars, where they help produce collagen and assist with tissue repair.
• Brain Integration: Studies have found male Y-chromosome fetal cells embedded in multiple regions of a mother’s brain, where they can differentiate and integrate into neural structures.
• Immune and Health Effects:
  • They help build materno-fetal immune tolerance, allowing the mother’s body to accept and remember foreign genetic traits from the father.
  • Research suggests higher levels of fetal microchimerism are associated with a lower risk of breast cancer in mothers, though they have also been studied for potential roles in certain autoimmune responses.

This knowledge has also even trickled  down into some theological underpinnings and teachings, at least in the Catholic Church.

We Catholics, and the Orthodox believers who refer to Mary with the unbelievably beautiful term Theotokos, meaning God-bearer, honor and esteem Mary, mother of Jesus, with the title Mother of God, for she literally is.

Now there are reflections, thoughts, teachings illuminating this concept with the knowledge that Mary carried the cells of Jesus within her long after his birth, perhaps even until her earthly life ended.

There are also a number of articles recently discussing studies made on breast milk. Did you know that breast milk is not just one formula, but an ever changing nourishment according to the needs of the child, whether or not it is sick, and even being different in the morning from the evening? So, this of course means that the infant’s saliva actually tells the mother’s body certain things, and the maternal body responds biologically to the needs of her own infant. I find this  miraculous in the full meaning of the word.

And perhaps a physical hint suggesting there’s a reason for the glow.

Ah, but the fathers were not to be outdone, and I so needed to see this. If the mothers had a glow, the fathers had a bold and brilliant swagger to accompany it, but tempered with a very visible attitude of protecting and treasuring precious gifts. Their expressions, posture, and soft words spoken to mom spoke of a man who had fallen into the role nature and God ordained for him eons ago. And they just melted when looking into strollers at sleeping babes.

These young men showed me the very best side of masculinity again, and something that I had, in my sheltered and arrogant ignorance, assumed was in a dying state in the world.

I don’t know what these young men believe, how they vote, what their life experiences have been. But I could not look at them and see the sheltered and threatened generation of men I’ve believed them to be. I genuinely saw sacrifice, love, strength, and utter dedication to their families.

We all know those qualities, in mother and father are precious, and not to be take for granted as lifetime gifts. But they must be there to be nourished and to flourish.

What a gift it was to see this, what a fine grace the Lord shared with me during a time I trudged in to one more dreaded appointment, one more task to be crossed of life’s list of suck it up and do its.

Those of you who are parents will remember the sleepless nights, the new parent fears, the exhaustion, the pediatrician visits, dirty diapers, spit ups and smelly shirts we endured for what seemed like centuries compressed into those few first months.

If you’re like me, perhaps we need the visual jolt of joy that maybe faded more than the list of struggles above.

Thank you Father, for your good gifts.