Mary and me

Our little Pennsylvania town really is little. The borough’s boundaries contain a pizza place run by genuine Mediterraneans, a Lutheran church with real bells, and very little else. Our yard has one resident squirrel, four perky purple mums, and—this week—buckets and buckets of rain. It is a good, sleepy place, in my opinion, to wait for a baby to come. And that is exactly what I’m doing: waiting, sleepy.

My mother-in-law recently observed to me that Christmastime is a wonderful part of the year to be pregnant. She remembers her pregnancy during December with fondness because it connected her in thought to the nativity. When she mentioned this, I felt a little embarrassed I hadn’t thought of it before.

This week, bundled up on the couch watching the rain fall, waiting for the six o’clock Lutheran bells and wishing I had a pizza from down the street, I asked myself: “What were Mary and Joseph doing right now?” Riding the hypothetical donkey across the Middle East in order to be taxed? I started to laugh, thinking of how many new verses I could add to “Mary, Did You Know?” Or perhaps rewrite the whole thing as “Mary, What Was It Like?” Did Mary suffer indigestion without Tums? Did her car seat—or donkey seat—pass the hospital inspection? Did she carry with her a delivery bag stocked with extra pillows, a birth plan, and mini shampoos?

Did Mary know what it was like to have a baby? Was she, unlike me, an older sister who had seen it all happen before? When the angel of the Lord came to her with his shocking proclamation, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son,” did she know what to expect even without the revered manuals of medical wisdom and, goodness gracious, Google?

This week at the midwife’s office, a phlebotomist drew my blood to check iron levels. “I’m very queasy,” I warned her, looking away from the needle. “I can barely handle a blood draw. I don’t know how I’m going to have a baby. I feel so inexperienced.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “it’s better not to know what to expect.”

I added this bit of wisdom to a category I keep in my mind called “Pieces of Pregnancy Advice that Are Not Helpful at All.” It’s right up there with, “Don’t worry about the pain of childbirth, you’ll forget it afterward.” That kind of advice is only helpful to people who have already gotten to afterward. Similarly, “It’s better not to know what to expect” can only lead someone to expect the worst.

Soon, this week’s rain will turn to snow. Our baby will be born, and I will see my feet again. I think about the angel’s other proclamation to Mary, this one even more startling: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” Isn’t that true of me, too? If it is, in the midst of the swirling unknown details, I don’t have to be afraid.