Hello dear ones,
On Thursday, I made a quick stop into the Dollar Tree for some Christmas candy. In that aisle, I saw a beautiful, blue-eyed baby boy shopping with his mama. When I left the store, a mom & dad & their three elementary-aged kids exited just before me & the little girl held the door for me. I heard the kids say, “Wow mom, look at the sunset! It’s so pretty!” I looked up & saw the most gorgeous sunset, striated with coral & the periwinkle shadows of clouds. In the southwest, it was flushed with gold & in the northeast, drifted into more lavender blue. I appreciate how hard it is to even define some of those colors, like they’re fastened packages of delight I try to unlock with my vocabulary & fall short.
I sat in my car & looked at the sunset over the Walmart parking lot & teared up, because I am very, deeply happy. Matt & I are expecting a baby boy. I’ll be 17 weeks pregnant on Christmas day. Our baby is due on my brother-in-law Josh’s birthday, June 4th, & though he’ll arrive before then because I’ll be induced, I consider it quite auspicious that his due date is his uncle’s birthday. To borrow from the Yiddish, Josh is a mensch.
I have long-loved midnight or 10 p.m. (winky-face emoji) mass on Christmas eve. It is my most favorite mass. It’s filled with little girls in shiny mary-janes dangling their feet from high up in their father’s embraces & whole families smushing closer together to let a stranger or late-comer sit in their already full pews; of incense & soft light; of songs about angels & the sweet peals of little ringing bells. Mostly, it’s filled with a story of hope: that God so loved people, he wanted to become human to live among us, to better understand us, to love us more deeply & inspire such love in kind.
I love the story in the Gospel of Luke where John the Baptist leaps in his mother’s womb when she, Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, hears Mary’s greeting & is filled with the holy spirit, because Mary is already carrying baby Jesus. Sure there are many things I don’t love about the Catholic church, but I do love its reverence for Mary. She is essential to the story. There would be no Jesus without Mary & to acknowledge this is in no part sacrilege, but it honors God’s mission of love & salvation.
Last year, I remember praying that by this Christmas, I would be further on my journey into motherhood. I have always wanted to be a mom. It feels like no small miracle (isn’t it always a miracle?) that I get to be one & I could not be more grateful or excited.
So I looked at that sunset, over gray cement & the commercial, consumer flurry of holiday shoppers, & I thought of how thankful I am for my tiny growing son, for my husband, our families, our friends, & to be on the Earth with its saturated sunsets just before the turning of the year on solstice. Also, hormones are indeed powerful.
I have been thinking about the movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. It’s a pretty dumb movie, but I love when Ricky Bobby, played by Will Ferrell, is saying grace & he prays to the tiny baby Christmas Jesus, whom he loves the best, saying he is, “just a little infant & so cuddly, but still omnipotent.” It makes me smile.
I guess what I love best about that tiny baby Christmas Jesus, is that in His story, we see all the vulnerability that makes us human, which can be so painful & burdensome, as a gift that was even desired by God. There exists no love without vulnerability. To save us all, Jesus first had to be born.
Now, we are rejuvenated by the deep slumber of the infant God & we rest, too, & celebrate & rest some more. We wait in a truly pregnant moment, in the promise of what’s to come –each day lighter from here.
Merry Christmas, dear ones, with love,
Annie
Soundtrack:
“Mary Had a Baby” by Odetta
“Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming” by Atlanta Master Chorale
& Now for something completely different! “Talladega Nights, Baby Jesus Prayer” This is dumb, but you can hear the prayer I reference in my letter ;)
Share this post