Remember when you are fifteen-ish? Remember highschool, and boys, and falling in love? Remember being pregnant? No? Good for you. Well, imagine for a second being pregnant at fifteen. Imagine breaking the news to your parents, your dad rising from his chair, his knuckles white resisting to hit something, probably the boy who knocked you up. The stare from your mom and the tear on the corner of her eyes brimming with disappointment. And then they ask the only logical question: who is he? You say the truth: you don't know.
Your boyfriend is next in line. You know this now for a fact, it's not him. When he sits next to you, you lose all expectations because it will be smart of him to leave you. You have been preparing yourself all night for the worst, repeating the self talk to reassure that if you really love him, you will let him know, and you will let him go. And everything is still going to be alright. As you look at his eyes you can see the worry and the confusion, waiting for you to say something. He takes your hand and stroke the back of it over and over, then he says that he will love you always. With that, you broke down.
Morning sickness is not pretty. One day you woke up feeling nauseated and all that, and you reached down to scratch that itch on your toes. And that's when it hits you. You can't even SEE your toes anymore. It seems like you thought everything looks normal, but now that you become concious, you realize that your butt is reeaaally big. You wonder if it will go back to normal size. Jo, your boyfriend that is, laughs as you complain about looking like a cow. "You will always be beautiful," he says. You know he means well, but you somehow can't help feeling annoyed. You turn to him and put on your best annoyed face, "I want to drink young coconut water today." He smiles understandingly, "You got it, Mary baby."
Luckily, Jo is a lot older that you are, so he's able to provide although things can be pretty tight. Your parents, being so disappointed as they are, won't admit you anymore. The shame you have brought to the family makes Jo and you move out of the city. It's a miracle that somehow the two of you make it day by day. You still remember the night you told Jo. You said to him, "Call me crazy, but don't call me a liar. I have not been fooling around. I've conceived the baby through the Holy Spirit and there was an angel who came to me to tell me all these. And, Jo, I understand if you don't..." He cut you off, " I know... the angel come to me in a dream. Mary, I will be crazy with you." Suddenly, a huge burden was lifted off your shoulder and you repeated what you initially said to the angel in your head like a powerful mantra: Your will be done to me, Your will be done to me, Your will be done to me. Also, you silently hope that the angel won't come and freak you out again in the future.
For me it's difficult to imagine that the characters in the bible are just people like you and I. The only difference is that they were here on Earth 2000 years ago. Let's not go that far, the national heros I read as a child in Indonesia history books, for example, it's hard to assimilate they were alive, doing all those heroic things 70 years ago. I understand that the Bible has to be concise, it's not a novel, not even an autobiography. And history books are full of facts. The elimination of a lot of the human nature in these stories sometimes mislead me to think that they do not feel as how I am feeling. It is like they always know the right things to do and they will do it without any fear. You know, like when Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac, he did it in faith. There's not much details on how he felt or how many sleepless nights he had before saying yes, or if he and Sara his wife had a huge fight over it. In the bible, it sounds like he immediately and trustingly did it, which I doubt happened.
Once I went to a discussion and there was an exercise of reading a passage and imagining what the story is like for you. It was the nativity story, right when Jesus was born, with the sheperds being told to go and see him, and the three wise men following the star. We closed our eyes and started to imagine it. There was one person reading question prompts to help us do the imagination. The questions were something like: how was the weather, was is cold or warm? how was the ground, sandy, grassy, dirty, many stones? what did the stable look like, what was the smell inside? place yourself as one of the characters in the story, who would you be? how did you react to the occasion? how did Jesus look like? did you talk to anybody? what were people conversing about? how handsome were the three wise men? Well OK, I added the last question, but hey it's valid!
It's a little unusual to imagine yourself in the scene like that, but suddenly, what you have believed from story books or nativity sets, just had to vanish. The place must be really really dirty and smelly, it's a stable for God's sake. Mary must look horrible after giving birth. The wise men must be super tired after the long journey. And Jesus could be one cranky baby. They probably stayed there the whole night taking turns to try to get him to sleep, using all the ancient methods they might know. And imagine, they were all guys, except Mary. That must be one heck of a scene.
OK, I probably went too far with the imagination. But, you get the point. These people are as real as yourself, flesh, blood, feelings and all. I am pretty sure all of them had doubts at one point, questioning God and His ways. I just never met anybody who never questions God in one way or another or never fear about what the future may hold. And it's important to acknowledge that we are exactly as human as them, and these stories can very well be our life stories, too. Just because many of them are saints, doesn't mean they were angels. They just made the right and faithful choice, through their own internal struggles and the journey to find love and wisdom. And we can be that 15 year old girl, who are being asked to do an impossible thing, and although there are many unknowns and the fears can be unbearable, it would be even more unbearable to say no.
I bet Mary did not know that she would change the world, she just gave her one small faithful yes at a time. Same as what is expected of us.
Happy early Christmas!!!
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