Our home.
I agree that Christmas isn’t just about gifts. I applaud people who don’t exchange gifts, or set up trees. I know we don’t need those things, but I love the tradition in the decor and smells alone. Gifts are so much fun to wrap and present to each other. I truly love the hubbub and general chaos that comes with the season. So I don’t need the lectures about being selfish and materialistic. Christmas is celebrating the birth of baby Jesus! I couldn’t be happier that He was born, truly.
Without being too cliche, I feel like I can relate more to Mary and Joseph this year than ever before. Jesus’ birth is always depicted as this peaceful, beautiful, clean, calm event. But I can’t help but think it probably wasn’t. Of course, times are different now.
We drove to the hospital in our car going 110 kms down the highway. They walked to the Inn with their donkey. Can you imagine labouring on a donkeys back?!?! I cannot.
We got a good scare upon arrival at the hospital, but were let in within minutes. Mary and Joseph were turned down when they had finally arrived at their place of safety. They had to go deliver their newborn baby in a filthy old barn out back.
Without pain meds. Kudos to you brave women who want to do things medication/intervention free, but I’m sure some of you can look back and find that moment where you wanted to back out and have pain meds. I bet Mary wished for some relief at times. Not to be crude at all, but Mary had never even had sex, and now she was delivering a baby! Did she really just lay back in the hay and quietly deliver Jesus? Or did she cry in pain? Or out of fear? I didn’t get pain relief with Laela either, but at least I had doctors! Someone was there to help me when I was bleeding too much. No doctors for Mary, Joseph, or Jesus.
Did Joseph know how to delivery a baby? Had he even held a baby before? Newborns are floppy and scary when you haven’t handled many. And slippery!
The similarities I see in our stories are mostly just in the uncertainties. My sister in law asked me the other day why I figured it made me a bad person to scream from pain. Did that really say anything about my faith, or my devotion to God? Did my volume make me any less of a Christian? I think not. Whose to say Mary didn’t cry? Or even scream! Maybe Joseph did too. Its awful to see someone you love in so much pain!
In both of our stories, God was completely in control. Mary didn’t have nurses or blue curtains or a warming table, and she did a bang up job! And I delivered Laela without an IV, a paper gown, or a glove-wearing doctor. This is by no way me saying I don’t appreciate our health care system, because I DO! And I plan to use it more thoroughly with our next child, haha! But we made it.
I wish this was a more fluid post. I have so many thoughts I’m not expressing the way I want to. To sum up my feelings, I have always heard the Christmas story in the Bible as “Jesus was born and then the wise men came with gifts and celebrated his birth the end.” I have never once stopped to consider what an insane labour and delivery it must have been. Well done, Mary and Joseph!
Such an unpredictable, scary situation, followed by an outrageously wonderful outcome 🙂 God is good.