I love Mary. Maybe I should be Catholic but my favorite part of reimagining the story of Jesus' birth is definitely envisioning the experience of Mary. The story of this young woman who receives the most unexpected news with the most unexpected circumstances naturally resulting in the most unexpected outcome.
In some ways it seems like Mary's story has so many elements that modern day women can relate too. Even before Jesus 'officially' enters the picture Luke tells us that Mary was "thoroughly shaken" at the news of her pregnancy. And while it was an angel who delievered her news and not a stick she just peed on for the fifth time after drinking ten glasses of water, everything about becoming a mother continues to hold quite a bit of mystery and unexpectedness (even with the birthing classes!)
While I may excel at making millions of 'mistakes', I never seem to have accidents. It seems like I have so many friends who have shared similar stories of unexpectedness. My friend who went to the emergency room because she was at a loss as to why she was so ill. My sister calling me late last year to tell me her most unexpected news. Even I was a happy accident at one time in my mom's life. (Now I think I qualify as more of a permament fixture).
For probably a year John and I have been tossing around the idea of having another baby. And like a game of Russian Roulette we half try, half the time. And every month I hold my breath and wait to see if we too will be the recipients of a "happy accident". In my mind I rehearse all the silly things I would say, like "I know! We weren't even really trying! I just can't believe it!" It seems utterly ridiculuos to be diappointed to not get something you weren't even sure you were ready for in the first place.
Because see, there is the other side of me. The logical side that tells my more dramatically inclined side that she is competely insane and needs to go get her uterus removed before she makes a decision that ends up causing her to check into the inpatient facility down at Lutheran Hospital. And then, just like the unwritten story of Mary I imagine, I pray the exact opposite of what I just prayed five minutes ago, taking back everything I just prayed, and tell God how NOT ready I am and how please NOT to 'bless' me with a happy mistake.
Still every time a month goes by without the unexpected news that I wholeheartedly await, I feel a loss.
Maybe that is where our happy accident stories come from. Why we live in the scientific age of the 21st century surrounded by so many couples who literally have no idea how they got pregnant. This fear confessing that we desire to be a parent, to be responsible for a human being in this unpredictable and broken world, and that it is a totally insane endeavor which we just tried for a very long time to willingly enlist into this army of insanity. I don't know exactly what it is, but I want it too. The pleasure of the constant unexpectedness that children bestow upon us...even before their arrival.
For me, in the midst of the realities of a full and demanding life I intuitively create and desire a narrative like Mary's. To embrace this concept that pregnancy just happened to us. Another arrival of unexpected news even to perhaps the most expecting persons.
I remember being four months pregnant on the beaches of Florida watching a tired mom and dad playing with their children in the sand and totally freaking out. I mean complete instant meltdown. Although John and I had tried for almost a year to get pregnant after six months of talking about trying and had just been through four months of utter esctasy that we were going to be parents, I had changed my mind and did not want to be a mother afterall.
Still in sptie of all the tears and hard lessons, the self sacrifices and life changing events, half of me craves my own 'happy mistake.' I want to stop justifying trying to do something totally insane and to just have it happen to me beacuse right now I am stuck in the relentless debate about what will damage Fiona more, being an only child or having a sibling. I worry about where the imaginary baby's room would be, (right now it would be the garage). How we would afford two children. How I could make it through another pregnancy that included throwing up on a daily basis yet, in some cruel joke of fate, still gaining fifty pounds. How I could possible balance another baby with all my personal goals and aspirations in ministry...
Sometimes I feel like a happy accident would be the place where I caught my breath, where I wasn't sitting in the middle but where a decision had been made but seemed so far out of my control.
Mary speaks to me in different ways every year but this year this is where Mary's story truly tugs at my heart. Outside of the whole riding a camel for two weeks while being 9 months pregnant (and no epidural), I really envy Mary's birth story. Because even when our "happy accidents" find their ways into the anticipation of all of our efforts, we still sit in this space of uncertainity.
Wouldn't it be comforting to have angels come down after you see that little positive sign...or don't. After you realize that what has been unexpected is now here...or that it isn't. Angels like those that visited Mary, in what must have been one of the most exciting and devastating moments of her young life, to tell you just as they told her "Look, I know you are feeling about one thousand emotions right now that are all mixing up into some creative expression of a nervous breakdown, but seriously, 'Don't be afraid'. God has a great surprise for you: a happy accident. You are not alone. It will all be okay."
Perhaps the real unexpectedness is never the signs we are stuck with but the messages the angels bring us. That whatever the circumstances; God is with us, we are not alone. For me, in the simultenous emptiness and fullness of my life this message has been the blessing of my Christmas Season. That in pregnancy, in the loss of a child, in the failure to conceive, Mary's angel's words continue to serve as both the quiet winter's snow that comforts me and as the stars guiding my way forward into the unexpectedness of the promises of the Christ child.
