If you’ve never seen Eloise at Christmas, you may not know that this adorable child wakes her nanny up on Christmas Eve by banging a cymbal, playing a trumpet and physically opening the nanny’s eye balls with her fingers to say “WAKE UP WAKE UP IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE!”. As I laid in bed this morning preparing to call my sister with that line, I was thinking of what Christmas Eve was like for Mary.
Having had two babies of my own, I have a feeling of what the anticipation must have been like. Now that we have those pesky “exact” due dates, as THE date approaches, there is no end to people asking about the baby, if s/he has come. If you are ready.
With my first, I was on summer break. I remember completing my to-do list the day before she was due. And then I sat in my recliner and waited for labor to start. I went for walks. Ate spicy food. And did the OTHER recommended thing to start labor ;). Instead I got to wait an incredible 12 more days for my precious little girl.
And with my little boy, between 2nd trimester bleeding and just never getting energy back, I was just happy to make it to June and then I STILL had to wait.
But I have a feeling that Mary had an almost opposite experience in a lot of ways.
Now, once you hit about 5 weeks out, a lot of pregnant women aren’t going anywhere of substantial distance. Let alone walking with your husband (we don’t know if she had a donkey) to a city far from home to pay a tax.
And I think everyone cringes a little bit when they find out she couldn’t find any inn space. But I mean, come on, she’s just waddled for DAYS. The trip probably took them longer than the other people. And we all know what that kind of walking can do to a very pregnant lady.
So after experiencing pregnancy myself, I am not really surprised that “while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered” (Luke 2:6)
I’ll bet she was tired. She probably had swollen ankles. And her back hurt. I’ll bet that her contractions had been picking up for some time making the last part of the trek even more difficult. Maybe no one let her into their inn because she looked like a hot mess. I don’t know. But I do know that the hard part was just getting started and she had just walked there.
I would guess that she was ready for a break and instead, went right into having a baby.
Those days of “will it be today”, she experienced on the road. I’m sure she was relieved to have made it to an inn instead of on the side of the road.
So why do I write this today?
I guess, to be honest, I’m not sure. I kept thinking of all the parallels and the incredible submission of the mother of Jesus to both God and her husband. And that would be a beautiful post.
But the part that kept sticking out to me this morning was that rush, that THRILL of KNOWING that the baby is coming.
JESUS IS COMING!
WAKE UP! WAKE UP! It’s Christmas EVE! And Jesus is coming!
May you have a blessed Christmas. And please take some time to read Luke 1-2 and Matthew 1-2. The anticipation of this little baby is beautiful and spreading and it fills each one of us.
-Leah
Leave a Reply