Born in a Barn

From my book Wrestling with Wonder ...

It might have happened like this:

MARY TELLS HER STORY

            There’s no place for us.  No place for this babe, this Son of the Almighty God, that I bear.  

But the pains come anyway.  Sharp, insistent.  Not now, I want to say.  Not yet.  There is no place for you.  Nowhere for you to be born.

            But my womb clenches again and I gasp.  The pains are more regular now, radiating into my back.  He will not wait, this divine baby of mine.

            Joseph approaches me, places a hand on my tight belly.  He shakes his head.  

            No place for us.

            I nearly double over.  My breath comes quickly, heavily.

            “There is a place with the animals,” he whispers.

            I swallow.  Hard.  Is it possible that this child, the Messiah, the King of all Kings, will be born in a barn?  No...

            Lord, is there no where else?  Can You find no other place for your own Son?

            But the heavens are silent.  No guest room, no spare closet, no private corner in a relative’s home.

            And the pain comes again.  

            Joseph takes my arm.  “We must hurry.”  

            “Not the stable.”

            “It’s the only place. I’m sorry.”

            I’m sorry too.  Oh, Lord . . .

            Step by step, stopping to breathe, to not breathe.  To groan.  I make my way toward the animals.

            And then we are there.  In the rustling, the stink, the dirt, the mud.  No midwife.  No friend.  No mother.  Just me.  Just Joseph.  And them.

            A donkey brays.  

            A cow lifts its tail.

            A horse stomps and spreads four legs.

            No, not here ... 

            I lay on the filthy straw.  I pant.  I cry.

            A horse nickers, pushes at an empty feeding trough.  

            I swat a fly.  And the pain comes again.

            This time, I scream.  I wheeze.  I gasp.  And my mind floods with ripping agony.  Ten seconds.  Twenty. Thirty.  A minute.  And more.  I breathe again.  I must breath.

            Joseph grabs the rags. I am sweating now.  He wipes my brow.  But there is nothing he can do.  He cannot share this pain.

            No one can.

            My belly contracts.  Hard.  I clench my teeth. Bite back my shouts. 

            It hurts.  Oh Lord, it hurts so much.  

            My sweat, mixed with the smell of horse urine and cow dung.  The snuffling of a donkey.  The frightened glance of a husband who is not the baby’s father.

            Help, Lord!

            A rush of water runs down my legs.  Minutes turn to hours.  Hours of shocking pain and moments of panting relief.  On and on. 

            The pain.  Mind-numbing.  Middle-ripping.  Pain.

            And the pressure.

            Finally, the baby is coming.  I scream at Joseph.  But he is ready.  

            I am half-squatting, half-laying.  

            “Push,” he yells.

            I push.

            I yell.

            I breathe.  Breathe in the rank stink.  Breath in the smell of blood.  Breathe in the scent of things that no king should smell.

            But this King will.  

            Oh God, will he really be born in a barn?  Your Son?  The hope of all Israel?

            I push.  And rest.  And push.  And yell.  And push.  And cry.  And push.  And groan.

It is no easy thing to birth a Savior.

            I see his head!”  Joseph’s eyes are wide.  His hands ready.

            I bear down.  Hard.

            And the baby comes.  A King, sliding into this world covered in vernix and blood, and surrounded by animals as the only witnesses to this moment that will change the world.  

            Joseph laughs.

            The baby wails.

            And I weep.

            I weep for a Promise born in a barn.  I weep for a Messiah born in the stink.  I weep for a King crowned not with gold but with blood.  Will it always be so?

            Joseph cuts the baby’s cord.  He presses my stomach and the afterbirth spews from me.  

It is done, this birthing of a Savior.

            Joseph wipes him with a rag and hands him to me.  I gather him in my arms.  He looks so normal, this Son of God.  So ordinary.  So small, this tiny babe, with a stock of dark hair, a red face, and wrinkled, old-man skin.  This, this is the One we’ve waited for.  

            I close my eyes and kiss his forehead.

            He squirms and squawks at me.

            I wrap this ordinary, extraordinary baby in rags and place him in the empty feeding trough.  A box made for the animals to eat becomes his bed.  He looks around.  Dark grey eyes taking in a world gone awry.  

            What must it be like for God to see through the eyes of a human babe?  To smell through a human nose?  To feel the scratch of the rags, the hardness of the board?

            But he doesn’t cry.  Not at this moment.  

            He just looks.

            He sees.

            And my eyes blur.

            There is the King of all Kings, the Son of God himself, wrapped in rags and lying in a feeding trough.  A Messiah surrounded by stink.  But somehow I don’t smell it anymore.

            I laugh.  I laugh at the incongruity.  I laugh at the wildness of my God.  

            I laugh, because the God of the Universe took my barn and turned it into a palace.  He took what should not be and filled it with wonder.

Anticipating Christmas

Hi Friends, 

Here are some thoughts as we approach Christmas 2021 . . .

            The winter rain pounded on the SUV’s windows, adding to the cacophony of shouts and grunts, squeals and squirming-in-seats from six already-unhappy kids.  I took a deep breath and hollered over the chaos.  “Hey, let’s sing some Christmas carols!”

            “What?” 

            “Nooooo!”  

            “Jingle bells. Batman smells!”

            “That’s not a real song.”

            “Is too.”

            “Jayden sings too loud.”

            “I have a headache.”

            Me too.

            This time I blew out a long breath from the front seat and spoke more quietly.  “How about we play a game?  Who knows a Christmas game?”

            “I hate games.”

            “Bethany always wins anyway ‘cause she’s the oldest.”

            Jayden started in with “Batman smells” again at the top of his voice, then promptly stopped and shouted, “Jayna hit me!”  Then, he began to howl.  A moment later, Jayna was howling too.

            Another shrill voice piped from the back of the car.  “I’m thirsty.”

            And then another.  “My feet hurt.”

            “My arms hurt.”

            “I don’t feel so good.”

            A fishy cracker flew from the backseat and impacted the front windshield.

            I turned around.  “No throwing crackers.  Give me those.”

            Jordyn gave a snuffly cry as she handed me the container.

            Another voice rose over the others.  “Are we there yet?  How much longer?”

            I stared over at my husband, Bryan.  “What were we thinking?”  Why didn’t we just stay home where everything was comfortable, everyone had what they needed, and I could send them to the basement if they bickered and complained?

            Bryan shrugged.  “It’s going to be a long four hours.”

            I groaned.  Four hours to our relative’s house for a pre-Christmas visit.  Four hours of aching feet, thirsty bodies, and bumpy roads? 

            Four hours would seem like four days.

            The number wiggled into my soul.  Four days. I remembered another family, a man and a very pregnant wife, taking an unwanted pre-Christmas journey with no SUV, no Christmas carols, no fishy crackers, no comfortable seats to squirm in.  Four days.  That’s how long it would take to walk quickly from Nazareth to Bethlehem, if they went through Samaria.  But Mary and Joseph would have never made it in just four days.  It probably took more like a week if they took the longer route to avoid the dangerous Samaritan road and went slowly for Mary.

            I sat back in my seat and thought about an almost-one-hundred mile journey, pregnant, on a donkey, or on foot (the Bible doesn’t say). I thought about the dust, the stones, the pressure of a babe kicking against a womb too tight for such travels.  That couldn’t have been an easy journey.

            The Bible doesn’t tell us much about it.  Luke 2:5 says, “He [Joseph] went there [to Bethlehem] to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.”  That’s it.  Mary went.  One step at a time. Forward, on an awkward, unwanted journey, for a reason she most likely didn’t understand. She just had to waddle forward, in faith, even when the road was bumpy and her feet hurt and she was thirsty and tired and it seemed like she’d never get where she needed to go.

            That’s a kind of journey that I could understand, not just from our pre-Christmas jaunt to a relative’s house, but from life.  Sometimes we have to travel a road we don’t want to go on to arrive in the place where God wants us to be.

            At the end of Mary’s journey, she would encounter Christ in a way she hadn’t before. The Messiah would be born!  She would hold God incarnate in her arms.  At the end of our family’s unpleasant journey, we would arrive at our destination and enjoy the company of people we love. We would play and laugh and encounter joy in a new way.  We’d even sing a few Christmas carols.

So, as I recall my journey, and Mary’s, I see that even through hurt and discomfort, maybe especially in hurt and pain, God is leading to a place where Jesus can be born in our lives in new ways, where we can see his face more clearly, hear his voice, and glimpse his glory anew.

The difficult pre-Christmas journey isn’t punishment; it’s God’s narrow road for us. It’s the way to his will. 

            That’s what I learn when I anticipate the coming of Christmas.  I learn to walk,  to stumble, to run ... and to remember: The journey matters.  God is in it.  He is in us!