Saturday, Third Week of Advent
Reflection by Stephanie Carlson
In December 2009, I was three and a half months pregnant with my son Christopher, my first child. I remember cranking up the volume to Handel’s Messiah in our apartment in Boston, listening over and over with a kind of effervescent joy to the choir singing, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…”. Carrying my first child that Christmas brought the message, the miracle of Christmas, home to me in a newly personal way. I wondered how much of the same emotion and anticipation Mary felt as a mother-to-be, only fourteen years old, some two thousand years ago. And I felt with such certainty and reassurance God's presence in my life: He who created me was now creating new life through me. Most of all I felt blessed, truly blessed and humbled to carry this child, to bear this responsibility, to be a mother (already!) to the little life that grew within me.
How different then to celebrate Christmas a few years later, to read and sing about and to rejoice over the impending birth of Christ when only weeks earlier, I had miscarried my second child. I was only five weeks along and, as it turns out, hanging Christmas garlands on our staircase at home when I realized something was terribly wrong. In the difficult weeks that followed, I came to terms of some kind with my loss: the pregnancy just wasn’t meant to be, perhaps there had been something wrong with the fetus, thank goodness it happened so very early. I had many close friends who had also had miscarriages, and talking about it helped. I tried to pray too, but I was mad at God, mentally slamming the door shut on Him (“I don’t want to talk to You!”). I knew God hadn’t caused my miscarriage, and that He certainly couldn't have planned for this to happen—what kind of God would plan these things after all?—but I kept hearing myself say, “You should have been there, God! What good are You? Where were You?”
Time is a great healer and teacher, and with prayer too, I have come to understand that God is and always has been with me. In the same way that He “knit me together in my mother's womb,” so He did also with my son Christopher. God even knew my child who didn't make it, whose “frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret…Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.” In one sense, this is the point of the Christmas story: God, in the form of Jesus Christ, came into the world to be among us, to share in our joys and sorrows. God sees in to each of our hearts, God knows us whether we are a mother with child, a child, or a mere cluster of cells. Just as I could never abandon my living, breathing child, and just as I will always love the child who never quite came into being, God loves me as His child — with the same devotion, the same tenacity, the same near insanity, eternally.
Reflection by Nancy Scarborough
Psalm 138 and Psalm 139 address the fear and self doubt that often plague me. Maybe you share some of the same fears.
One fear that troubles me now and undermines me is the fear that I am unlovable to anyone who truly knows me, both my "good" and "bad" parts. How human is that feeling?! Even my little grandson wishes to present only his best side to his grandparents. That desire starts so young in a human being. Fear of my darkness being known, leading to rejection by those whose regard I value so much. Psalm 139 helps me deal with that fear. It reminds me that: "Lord, thou hast examined me and knowest me...Thou hast kept close guard before me and behind and hast spread Thy hand over me. Such knowledge is beyond my understanding." But I am so grateful for it.
A related fear, a common one, is fear of the dark, both in the physical sense and spiritual. My grandson shares that fear, so we make sure he has a flashlight with him at bedtime. But what about the darkness within? Psalm 139 tells me that: “If I say surely darkness will steal over me, night will close around me, darkness is no darkness for Thee...Both dark and light are one.” God's love is bigger than my darkness. Psalm 138 says: “I will praise thee, O Lord, with all my heart.” Like the psalmist, I too am full of thankfulness for God's love, which is beyond my understanding.