A Parenthood Christmas

So–a lot of women I know are in that window of life where one’s body starts needing repair from growing, then expelling a human.

If you’re not there? Hey, super-fun stuff.

I’ve been reminded wombs, too, bear both the weight of joy and of the curse on this world. And maybe this carries a big exclamation point as I raise four teenagers.

Sometimes I think, Wow. I love this job. My heart could burst with how much I love these people, and how excited I am with the people they’re becoming.

And sometimes I think, Wow. Parenting really, really hurts.

Well. There went my dignity

I mean, parenthood can kind of sweep you into unspeakable joy in a single moment–and sweep away dignity with it, too, from the point that you start peeing on a stick.

Later you’re wearing a hospital gown that’s never stitched up the back, or kind of resigned to strangers seeing all you have to offer (but in one of the hardest, best moments of your life). Or you’re painfully paperwork-pregnant for an adoption.

Then, your toddler threw blocks at another kid in the nursery, but looks enraptured when they see your face.

Or you get a call (the good kind, then the bad kind) from a teacher.

Or your teen says “You’re the best!” and then decides to wear that to school.

When God says “In pain you shall bring forth children”?

Um. Yes. This, I feel.

(Interestingly, psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson makes a case that when God states the curse on Adam and Eve, he’s simply the only one still telling the true story. Thompson suggests that rather than God’s emphasis resting on punishment, God is telling how things will be, must be, because of sin and its shame. The death he told them would come has already begun.)

This part doesn’t really make the index cards of advice they hand out at all those pastel-colored baby showers: Sleep when he sleeps. It’s easy to make your own baby food!

This is going to gut you like a fish. 

Greetings, You Who are Highly Favored/Pierced

I’ve thought about all this, though, as I think on Mary, who I may want to grab a latte with in heaven. Man, does that woman have a story.

Even with her carrying and delivering a perfect child, Simeon addresses her poetically, tragically in the temple: And a sword will pierce your own soul, too (Luke 2:35).

A few pages before, she’s hailed as blessed. Favored. It was exclaimed over Mary, too, “Blessed are you among women!” You are favored by God!

And throughout time, she’ll be remembered that way.

Yet sometimes my view of God’s favor. of being “#blessed!” can be very prescriptive. In fact, sometimes it’s a thinly veiled version of the American Dream. Maybe we wouldn’t expect this from her life.

As in,

• You, an unwed mother, will live in the shame of your community, and a near-divorce (Matthew 1:19).
• You will flee the country from your son’s intended infanticide, but your friends won’t make it out (Matthew 2:16-18).
• Your son will die of the sickest form of unjust capital punishment. But not before you wonder if He’s gone straight-up crazy (Mark 3:21). 
• Oh, and You will live in poverty, as will your son (Luke 2:24, Leviticus 5:7, Matthew 8:20).  The government will execute your nephew unjustly (Matthew 14:1-12), and another one of your sons will also be (as far as we know) tortured to death. 

In parenthood, and like nearly every righteous biblical character, Mary is both blessed and pierced.

Your wish list. Burned

Author Scott Erickson writes of her annunciation in Honest Advent (a book I’m currently loving and reading to my teens), “In any divine annunciation, you receive revelation as a gift, yet at the same time you receive notice that all that you had planned is ending. It’s all over. Everything will change–most of all you.”

Erickson continues,

Revelation is a hard gift to receive. You must give up everything else to receive it–like finding a treasure in a field and selling everything you have so you can get that treasure.

But then again, she who is willing to accept the cost of revelation finds herself in the deepest of stories. Stories that are so mysterious, divine, and human that we still tell them today.

May you receive the light of divine annunciation in the flames of your best-laid plans.

The One who wept first

But also, this: In raising children, perhaps especially in raising teens, I understand what God’s parenthood is like; what it is like for an infinite, perfect God to bear children. We hear both his exclamations of love, singing songs over his people–and his poetry of loss.

(God compares himself to women and mothers many times in Scripture, like in Isaiah 42:14, when he likens himself to a woman in labor.)

For God to create mankind was to invite on himself deep pain and sorrow. The metaphor of Mary’s life, and ours, are shadows of God’s own pain in loving and bringing forth life.

Think of the entire book of Hosea, where God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. It’s a metaphor for God’s people turning from him.

Remember Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, who he wanted to gather under his wings like a hen, “but you were not willing (Matthew 23:37).

Or consider Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son; the waiting father there is an image of God.

God knows what it’s like to have children, to have them rip you apart (or perhaps pierce your hands and feet)–and to reiterate over and over again with your love, You are so worth it.   

This Christmas, in those moments you’re elated or disappointed in your kids or even in palpable delight or pain–walk with me into worship.

God’s entrance into the world through a woman’s groaning, straining body reminds us his love goes that far; farther.

He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.  

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