Ethan’s Mom: Last week before church started I was visiting with a friend who should be celebrating her first Christmas as a grandmother. Her daughter, whom I remember being in the youth group when we first joined our church, was due in October with a baby girl but is now in “the club” after her daughter was stillborn this summer. Although our stories have some pretty significant differences, we are both believers and mommies to babies in heaven, which makes Christmastime more important and more painful than you might realize. At the end of our chat, my friend looked at me and said “You both are really tough chicks.” I chuckled at first but then said, “You know what? We are.”

One theme that has popped up again in Bible Study Fellowship this year as we are studying the People of the Promised Land is that people play a role in God’s plan for their lives. God promised them the land, but they had to go take it. They had to take the first step into the Jordan River, blow their trumpets outside the walls of Jericho, and show up for battle when they were completely outnumbered. Last year when we studied Romans, we learned that salvation is the same way. It is not by our own will or volition we are saved, but there is some kind of mystery of how God enables us to receive His salvation through faith — not the absence of doubt but the presence of faithfulness. I remember one of the teaching leaders illustrations was about a man who walked (or maybe rode a bike?) on a tight wire across Niagara Falls. He asked the crowd if they believed he could carry someone across with him, and the crowd went wild with cheers… until he asked for a volunteer. No one came forward to show their faith in his ability by the action of volunteering.

There are days I literally have no idea how I made it through, and I know there was something supernatural going on. But even on those days, I have to choose to get out of the bed. To be honest, nearly two years later, the days where that is a sacrificial choice are fewer but not gone. Just today I had two conversations (with my friend and my husband) that basically ended in us shaking our heads as we said “It’s just really, really hard.” Sometimes there is just nothing else to say.

I didn’t sign up for this. It is my honor to be Ethan’s mom, but it is a really, really hard job.

Which brings me to the actual point of this blog post — there is a woman, really a girl, who signed up for the toughest mothering gig ever. When the angel showed up to tell Mary, “You will conceive and give birth to a son and you will call his name JESUS,” she didn’t try to find out exactly what would be involved before saying yes. She had one (understandable I’d say) logistical question but quickly came to “I am the Lord’s slave, may it be done to me according to your word.”

I can remember in 2016 sitting in the Christmas Eve service, 34 weeks pregnant with the twins, thinking how amazing Mary was for traveling to Bethlehem. At that moment, if Greg had told me we needed to take a trip to his homeland of Ohio, I would have pointed at my huge belly and declared that “we” would not be making this trip with him. Even still, nine hours in the car cannot be compared to a few days on a donkey. Mary is a rock star, I thought.

Two weeks later, there was an ice storm in Birmingham, and I went into labor with no way to get to the hospital. A fire-rescue truck came to our aid and attempted to get me to the only accessible hospital, which I had never even seen before much less planned to go to for delivery. There was no room for my husband in the back with me, so he watched  their births as best he could through the small window up front. There was no one to hold my hand, no technology to monitor the babies, no nurses to coach me through the contractions, and no mom standing nearby with a camera and moral support.

After we got to the hospital and they asked me a million registration and medical history questions, one of the nurses asked if she could call my mom for me. YES! If there is ever a time when a daughter wants her mom, it is when she herself becomes a mom (or becomes a mom again).

Back to Mary — she makes this crazy trip on a donkey. I have always wondered whether or not she expected to make it back before the baby was born. It is not inconceivable that the difficult trip contributed to premature labor and the baby took everyone a bit by surprise. Either way, whether she knew she would be away for the birth or not, she was. No mom or familiar midwife to coach her through her very first delivery. No familiar and safe home in which to welcome her baby.  She was probably in the last place she would have thought she would deliver the Son of God.

This is a far cry from the typical nativity scene played out in churches and yard displays. We just went to the live nativity at our church, and I think ours is typical of most of these programs. Mary and Joseph walk straight to the stable. At best, Mary looks about 6 months pregnant and is moving pretty well. Lights go out. Lights come up. Mary and Joseph sit beaming at a baby doll either in Mary’s arms or the manger. Shepherds and Wisemen arrive, and everyone just looks goo goo eyed at the baby. Curtain.

Now, don’t misunderstand me — I am not advocating that we all bring our children to watch an actress screaming in pain with bloody rags around the stable. I just think maybe we should all realize that was part of Mary and Joseph’s experience as much as the goo goo eyes.

Yes, Joseph found that kind innkeeper. But how many doors did he knock on first? How close were the contractions when they finally found the stable? Did Joseph deliver Jesus and if so, how did he know what to do? Did Mary think “oh how charming this little manger is, full of nice clean hay” or did she cringe as she put Jesus down in the feeding trough because her arms were too tired to hold him another minute? When Mary said, “Let it be done to me as you have said” could she have imagined this? Did she think “this is not what I signed up for as the mother of the Messiah”? What an amazing honor, what a really, really hard job.

Andrew Peterson’s song, “Labor of Love,” conveys the real scene well:

“It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David’s town

“And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother’s hand to hold

“It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

“Noble Joseph by her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
On the streets of David’s town
In the middle of the night

“So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

“For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love.”

I was really upset for weeks about how the twins came into the world. Turns out, having twins (one breech) in the back of a moving ambulance in an ice storm is a walk in the park compared to burying one of them two months later. It didn’t get any easier for Mary either. When Simeon tells her “a sword will pierce your soul,” he is not kidding. She gets to see the miracles, but she is there at the foot of the cross, watching her baby cry out in terrible pain. She watches him die.

At the retreat I went to in September, the counselor handed out small cards with a picture of Michelangelo’s Pieta on them. I had never seen this sculpture before. Mary is holding the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. She has one hand cradling him and the other open and pointed up, as if she is both holding on and letting go at the same time. According to Catholic tradition, Mary was the first person to hold Jesus and the last. That was her holy and sacred duty and privilege as his mother. Mary, blessed among women, is my new #1 hero in the faith. She isn’t just a smiling, well-coiffed new mother in a charming, rustic stable. She is the toughest of all tough chicks.

If you are reading this as a mother of a baby in heaven, hear me say this — you are a tough chick. God has promised to see you through to heaven where He will wipe all the tears from your eyes and reunite you with your sweet baby. Keep choosing to fight the darkness, and know you are winning the battle even if all you can do is take your next breath. If you can’t take it day by day, back up to hour by hour, or even minute by minute. I am praying for you as I write this, and I think you have a special place near to the heart of the Mary as well. After all, she is in “the club” too. But most of all, you are seen and known by the God who was faithful to strengthen Mary for her very unique mission and is able to strengthen you for yours.