Faithful followers, donors, supporters, friends, family, people of inspirational character, and maybe even strangers:
I’m not ready for the holidays to be over. Not at all. I feel like I was late to the holiday party and I’m still sitting here, enjoying the joy of Christmas and the hope of the New Year and 84% of the world has just moved on without me. It’s not the presents and the parties and the treats that I’m not ready to bid farewell to; I’m actually glad the treats are gone; they’re too tempting for a dietarily restricted individual like myself. That stuff is great, but what I’m really not done with is the story of Christmas and the potential that a new year brings.
Trust me when I say I’ve heard the Christmas story more times than I can count. Every year someone in the family reads it aloud on Christmas morning while someone else arranges the corresponding pieces of the nativity as the story progresses. (By the way, how weird would it be if we had little figurines of all the people who were in the hospital room during/shortly following our birth? Too much reflection about the nativity maybe?) So that’s at least 21 times for 21 Christmases, plus all the times in church, in private school, when I’ve watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, and when I had to memorize Luke 2 in 5th grade.
This year, instead of focusing on the birth of Jesus, I focused on his mother more than I ever had before. Maybe I’m late to the Mary party, but guys, what an incredible young lady she is.
I have this really big pet peeve that I’m also really guilty of participating in – funny how that works – and that’s self-deprecation and self-doubt masquerading under the improper identity of humility. Realizing this and working on this and discerning this is a process that’s been underway, but really reflecting on Mary so incredibly simply gave me a picture of what true, God-honoring humility looks like.
Mary, a “lowly servant girl,” had found favor with God. She was in his good graces, had his approval and acceptance, and he was pleased with her. To me, that seems like blessing enough. Because of this favor, He gave her the incredible blessing of a task of carrying and raising the Son of God. I can’t even wrap my head around what that means. Holy responsibility – literally.
Mary lesson number one: the most beautiful and honoring things God calls us to also are going to require a whole lot of risk and they’re going to be really scary and they might even seem impossible. But they’re worth it.
Beyond the circumstances, though, what stands out most about Mary is how she responded to those circumstances. First of all, if I were her, I would spend about 2 weeks in pure disbelief, 4 weeks crying and panicking, the following seven and a half months cycling between believing I was crazy, saying I can’t do it, and briefly convincing myself it would all be okay, only for the cycle to repeat again. Maybe, hopefully by my final month of pregnancy would I simply accept that it is what it is and I have no other option but to have this holy baby and be his mother the best that my young, inexperienced, imperfect self could. Maybe Mary did a little or a lot of this and it just wasn’t recorded and canonized, but her response is absolutely beautiful.
To the angel, “Mary responded, ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” (Luke 1:38) To Elizabeth, Mary responds in an eloquent song of praise, praising the Father for his never ending mercy, the blessing he’s placed on her life, and the way he lifts the oppressed. (Luke 1:46-55)
She responds with a humility that says “okay, God, maybe I don’t see it yet, but your words are the only truth, so may I become your living truth.”
Mary lesson number two: humility is a lot like looking at ourselves the way God does: accurately seeing the best bits of us for what they are – incredible gifts from the Father, results of grace, and tools to be used to glorify the giver – and accurately seeing our shortcomings for what they are – areas of our lives through which God’s transformative grace can be made known to us and to others. It’s positioning our whole self at the feet of Jesus after receiving the biggest news of our lives; it’s offering our whole self to be used by Him because without, the good stuff about us isn’t the best it can be and the bad stuff about us doesn’t get any better.
It’s seeing the Father for who he is – able to accomplish anything he desires through even the “lowliest” of people – and claiming the identity he places on us as our one, true identity.
As the turning of the year came and went, I was a little confused about where to focus for a resolution. I didn’t want to be too concrete and specific, because starting August, almost nothing is going to be familiar or predictable or entirely in my control. But I thrive off of concrete goals, directions, etc. and kind of fail to do anything if a goal is too broad, so I didn’t know where to go.
This year is going to be full of a lot of big askings of me. I’m not going to be asked to carry the Son of God in my uterus, thank goodness, but I will be called light-years out of my comfort zone a number of times. In order to best respond to those opportunities, I’m going to have to let go of two things: my false pride that I often put on to mask my insecurities and the self-doubt that I pass off as a cheap form of humility.
I know this isn’t a change as clear cut as “no more sweets” or “always untie my running shoes before I take them off” (that was actually kind of a resolution I made last year, and let me tell you, it really did save me a lot of frustration when it came time to put them on again). This is going to be a daily laying down of the construction paper, crayon colored, cheaply bejeweled crown I’ve crafted for myself, and a constant seeking to understand and accept what God says of me.
I’m praying that in my seven months remaining of preparation and my eleven months abroad I learn to make this a normal habit. I’m praying that for you and I both, we may be both truly confident in Christ and truly humble, both bold and graceful, and always sure of the transformative grace that is offered to us daily.
“You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.”
Luke 1:45
P.S. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I know that was lengthy. If you’ve ordered a shirt, know they’re coming to me shortly and will soon after be finding their way to you. More importantly, THANK YOU. My life has become a never-ending thank you letter to all of you, and it’s so beautiful and humbling. Also, if you’ve ordered a shirt and have yet to get the money to me, please do as soon as you can so that my support bar can reflect your very generous support.
