It’s Christmas Eve and Jon and I did our devotion together about Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem. They probably walked. And why was it that Joseph brought his wife? Couldn’t he have left her home with her mom and aunties to give birth there while he signed for both of them for the census? Huh. Good question.
Then the devotion has a few questions to foster discussion and the first was to tell what we knew of our own birth story.
This is what I know: My mom was at home when a neighbor stopped by. Mom was a month from her due date and didn’t want to go to the hospital but the neighbor convinced her to go so she did.
My dad was out of town at a basketball tournament north of Santa Barbara. He didn’t make it home in time.
My mom and dad married in 1966. They were both graduated from Cal State Long Beach and were teaching and coaching and building a life. They wanted a family but weren’t able to have kids. So they worked and applied for an adoption and, in 1973, they got my brother Joe. Six months later, a newborn needed a family and they brought my brother Matt home. Two kids in six months.
Then, for some odd reason, my mom got pregnant with me after all those years. I was a month early so there was no baby shower before I arrived, both her parents had already passed away and her husband was away on business. From what I understand her labor and delivery went pretty fast so I don’t think my grandmother (my Dad’s mom) in Long Beach would’ve made it to Mission Viejo in time.
It should have been a time for big family and celebration and an answer to prayer as every new baby is. But I think she was alone. Just me and her. And they named me Hope.
I got married in 2000. In 2002, Jon and I decided to spend a year abroad in Oberursel, Germany where Jon studied at the seminary. My first notion that perhaps I might be expecting a baby was in October, right as we arrived in Oberursel. With a German-English dictionary in hand, I went to my first OB appointment. By myself while Jon was in class.
Yup. We were going to have a baby. Yes. I was 22 weeks pregnant. Surprise. Here’s a picture of our baby on an ultrasound.
Samuel was born in a land far away from home. It was just me and Jon in the hospital in Bad Homburg. No money for baby things so we were given clothes and diapers and a crib and even, our friend Michelle’s brother, stationed in Iraq, let us borrow his car to drive to and from the hospital.
It seems crazy to say that I still have a deep heartbrokenness from that time. I had such big dreams for how it would go and how unforgettable bringing my son into the world would be and it didn’t come to pass at all how I imagined. I think lots of women harbor those same emotions. Even with healthy babies in arms and babies growing into young adults, for some weird reason, that feeling never seems to disappear.
And it seems crazy to think that, only this morning, it would dawn on me that my mother might have that same deep heartbroken feeling over my arrival. After waiting and wanting a baby with eyes like her own for all those years, whatever dream-like scenario she may have wanted, probably none of it came to pass on that day when neighbors and church ladies got her to the hospital with no husband to hold her hand and no mother to give her strength.
And to think we put so much stock into rough starts without considering that rough starts point directly to the savior of the nations, the redemption and transformation found in his unfailing love and how birth stories, no matter the story, are a testimony to pain and heartache bound to something much much bigger.
Me, my mom, Mary the mother of God, countless other women willing to bear the darkness, the lonely toil, the road we must walk alone, in order to herald the coming of something bigger and brighter than us. Joy mixed with sorrow is a thing. The light shining in the darkness is a thing. More importantly, the darkness that cannot comprehend it has no power over a light like the one God sent into the world in His son, Jesus. “The Light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel.” He has come into the world. By a mother all alone, in a far off land, bringing a child into the world in a way not at all like she would’ve wanted, but in the way that points to the overwhelming love of a God placing himself in the lowest position, in the lowest of places with the lowest of people to teach us again and again that His kingdom does not look like the kingdom we wish it to be. But that his power is made perfect in weakness.
And birth stories are about weakness and strength, triumph and suffering and turning endings into beginnings. And birth stories are happening all the time and we begin again and we are reminded of newness sprouting from the old and we, in the midst of joy and sorrow, have much to be thankful for.
Merry Christmas.