It is easy to admire our Christmas Jesus, swaddled and sleeping peacefully in a feed box…
But I think of Mary.
Stomping her calloused heels, bleating with the sheep as her whole body tightens, swells, drops with the pressure of an unborn babe. How many hours must she endure this agony?
I think of Mary.
Leaning on a hay bale, squatting, kneeling, slumping on the floor. A song of gasps, grunts, and groans echoes in the rafters. No midwife to instruct her when to push. Joseph, will he tell her when the king of kings is crowning?
I think of Mary.
Fluid staining the hay-strewn ground. Adopted father brings the newborn to Mary’s chest. The relief, the tears, the filmy skin. Does Jesus cry? It is not a sin to cry. Let your lungs fill with air, holy of holies.
I think of Mary.
What is this second birthing? How strange, alien. Will Joseph feed it to the animals, or bury it? Perhaps an olive tree will root in the innkeeper's yard.
I think of Mary.
Kissing the babe’s downy hair, swaddling him in cloth she sewed and packed for this journey. Liquid gold stings—she does not know every suckle will produce another rip tide in her belly. The cracking, the bleeding...is his latch too shallow?
Oh, Mary,
Most blessed among women, her body broken, torn, bleeding. She needs a hot bath, and a steaming bowl of broth, yet—the stench of birth mingles with animal hide and dung.
She has never been so tired, never felt so alive. The labor, most excruciating pain of her young life. She looks to the heavens, and whispers, it is finished.
But also, it has just begun.
This is Mary, behold her in the flesh.