Cells That Never Let Go

In 1996, researcher Dr. Diana Bianchi at Tufts University made a remarkable discovery. She found that during pregnancy, cells from the baby cross the placental barrier and take up permanent residence in the mother's body. She detected these fetal cells circulating in mothers' blood twenty-seven years after they had given birth. The phenomenon is called microchimerism — one person literally carrying the living cells of another within them.

But here is what stunned the scientific community even more. Those transferred cells don't just drift passively. Researchers have found them migrating to sites of injury in the mother's body, differentiating into the exact tissue type needed, and participating in repair. A child's cells, healing their mother's wounds — years after birth, without either of them knowing it.

This is what love does. It gets inside us. It becomes part of us at a level deeper than memory or emotion. When the Apostle John writes that "God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God in him," he is describing something more than sentiment. He is describing a kind of indwelling — the very life of the Almighty taking up residence within us, repairing what is broken, present in places we cannot even see.

You carry the love you have received. And it is still working in you, even now.