“Imagine what it would have been like for Mary,” my husband suggested. He spoke in a tone that, as I see now, was not as calm and reassuring as I had then thought–for he, too, felt fearful as we sped through the November darkness of the Philadelphia suburbs to the birth center where I would shortly give birth to our daughter. After quoting Scripture to me and offering encouraging words, my husband tried another method of soothing me: he suggested that I consider the birth of our Lord. Such consideration put my pain and fear into perspective at the moment, but in the days that followed, it also framed my experience of the Advent season.
Throughout my pregnancy, I had imagined Mary’s lot. I wondered what Mary felt when our Savior first kicked in the womb, if Mary went into labor earlier or later than she expected. I thought, too, of her undoubtedly uncomfortable trip to Bethlehem upon a donkey or by foot. But it was not until I was myself in labor that I grasped the gravity of her labor: when Mary gave birth to our Lord, she embraced a process unassisted by medication or doctors, far from her own home and family. The most significant labor and delivery in the history of the human race was likely also a lonely and fearful one.
And what of the weeks afterwards, when Mary learned to nurse Jesus and adjusted to life as a mother? As I returned home from the birth center, my thoughts again turned to that most significant new mother and newborn. What was Mary’s attitude like when Jesus woke in the middle of the night to eat, yet again? What ran through Mary’s mind when Jesus cried in exhaustion?
It is my assumption that Jesus, being fully human, did indeed cry as a child, to the contrary of the beloved “Away in a Manger.” It is also my assumption that Mary could have and likely did on occasion feel pain and frustration in childbirth and parenting. Neither Scripture nor the Reformed tradition of which I am a part speaks much to Mary’s demeanor in labor or in the early weeks and years of mothering Jesus. But as I have reflected on Mary and her child in the weeks since my daughter’s birth, I have found that Mary’s fiat mihi response to the angel Gabriel–“let it be done to me according to thy word”–contains much. Mary’s fiat mihi suggests that her attitude during the childhood of Christ, just as at the conception of Christ, was marked by submission.
Regardless of Mary’s sinlessness or sinfulness, the selflessness of fiat mihi indicates an attitude of utmost forbearance. I can picture Mary, tossing in the night as the Lord kicked within her, thinking of his promised arrival. I can picture Mary, exasperated with the squirming, sleepless infant who is our Savior, reminding herself of his holy purpose. I can picture Mary, in the midst of weaning or toilet training or teaching her son to walk, returning in her mind to Gabriel’s words about the never-ending kingdom of the child who, at the time, completely depended upon her. Just as Mary accepted and patiently bore Christ in utero, we can assume that she patiently–though perhaps not perfectly–bore the difficulties of parenting him.
Welcoming a child around Advent has, for me, drawn out new depths in the meaning of Advent. And the inverse is true as well: consideration of Advent draws out new depths in the calling to care for a little one. The great tenderness of holding my child reminds me of the even greater tenderness of the paradox of the incarnation. Mary held the Son of God in the flesh, likely between six and ten pounds, with smooth skin and the “newborn smell” and a few wisps of soft, dark hair. And, at the same time, celebrating the tender paradox of the Incarnation intensifies my affection for the seven pound, smooth-skinned, dark-haired creature God has entrusted to my husband and me. Likewise, the challenges of soothing her cries and learning to nurse and cleaning up her inevitable diaper fiascos remind me of the challenges that Mary faced and of the great humility of Christ, that he should subject himself to such apparent indignities of the human race as crying, nursing, pooping, and peeing. And, at the same time, the great humility of Christ pictured in the Incarnation fortifies me to face the challenges of caring for a baby.
Mary’s virtues are more than exemplary maternal virtues; they exemplify godly behavior in and beyond the season of Advent and Christmas. They mirror the virtuous behavior of her Son. Forbearance, tenderness, humility in the face of challenge–all these resounded in the first Advent, and all are incumbent upon us as we await the second Advent. For we are not only to be patient with our children as Mary was with Jesus. We are to be patient, too, for the coming of the Lord, as the book of James tells: “See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”
In the days and weeks leading up to my due date, all the lasts–last day of work, last dinner out, last trip before the baby–and the rapid changes looming in the half-known near future caused me to feel as though an end was coming, the end of a journey or an era or even a life. Pregnancy and its completion in labor represented an end to my former world. Childbearing thus directed my thoughts not only to the first Advent but also to the second Advent: in Scripture, labor images the end of the world.
Though the wedding supper of the Lamb is perhaps the most recognizable biblical metaphor for Christ’s return, childbirth, too, defines the experience of the second Advent. In Romans, Paul likens the “sufferings of this present time” to childbirth. “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now,” he writes. All creation and even we ourselves are, for now, arrested by pains and groans as we wait for “the glory that is to be revealed.” But Paul urges us to “hope for what we do not see.” Like Mary and all Israel waiting for the Messiah, like a mother welcoming a child, we are to “wait for it with patience.”
Image Via: Yale Youth Ministry Institute
