Clear Epic

Merry Christmas!! It is Christmas Eve and I sit here thinking about this year, this special year. My daughter’s very first Christmas! One year ago tonight I told my family that a baby was on the way and now we have our five month old. My how time flies.

Christmas has, much like everything else, taken on a whole new meaning. I was sitting in church yesterday and I couldn’t stop thinking about Mary. Here I am as a new Mom worrying about this and that, worrying about how I’m raising Prayse. Will I do my job well enough to raise her to be a good and righteous person? Will she look around, see those in need, and jump right in to help? Will she treat others with the same respect that she wants to be treated with? I sure hope so. I take it upon myself to be a Mama who sets a good example and hopefully she will be someone who others love to be around simply because of her spirit and good heart.

In church I thought about how much I worry and think, “Here was Mary, raising a child who was to be the Savior of the world! He was Jesus, Son of Joseph the carpenter, but he was also Jesus, Son of God.” Holy cow. I think I have a big job in front of me, can you imagine the pressure she must have felt? Huh, I have it easy Not really, I think that every Mom (I hope) feels the same pressure.

I had to disagree with the pastor on something he said as he was preppimg up the sermon. I understand that for thousands of years, the people of God had been waiting for their Savior. I understand that his virgin birth had been prophecized about over seven hundred years before his arrival. I’m sure everyone was expecting a big strong guy to ride in with an army of a thousand angels at his side. I’m sure that the birth of a baby was not what they were expecting.

However, I have to respectfully flat out disagree with the description that Jesus’ arrival was quote “Anti-Climactic.” Only a man could ever describe it that way. It is of course impossible for him to understand, but if we can even just forget about the fact that Jesus is who he is, Mary had just given birth to her son! Nothing about that experience was anti-climactic. Nothing. Her whole life altered, priorities shifted, her heart grew ten million times bigger until she thought it would burst. She was in pain, she was tired, but she had never felt so exhilarated in her whole life. She had just given birth, and she had done it against the odds, in a stable. Even if Jesus was not the Son of God, and he was simply Jesus, son of Joseph, this was still a miracle. But maybe only a Mama can understand.