Written in Her Very Cells

In 2012, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center made a remarkable discovery. Examining brain tissue from deceased women, they found male DNA — cells from sons those women had carried decades earlier. The phenomenon is called fetal microchimerism. During pregnancy, a small number of the child's cells cross the placental barrier and take up permanent residence in the mother's body. They have been found in her heart, her lungs, her brain. Some of these cells remain for the rest of her life.

A mother quite literally carries her children inside her long after they are born.

This is how the love of God works. It is not a sentiment that visits and then retreats. It is not a feeling that fluctuates with the season. The love of the Almighty takes up residence. It crosses every barrier we erect and embeds itself in the deepest places of who we are. The apostle Paul prayed that believers would be "rooted and grounded in love" — not merely touched by it, but inhabited by it.

You cannot scrub fetal cells from a mother's bloodstream. She does not choose to keep them. They simply belong there, woven into her biology by the mysterious architecture of life.

And you cannot separate yourself from the love of God. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons. It has already crossed the barrier. It already lives within you.