Oh come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant!
Oh come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold him
Born the King of Angels:
O come, let us adore him
O come, let us adore him
O come, let us adore him
Christ the Lord.
Nothing about the Christmas of 2017 has been typical. Logan has been sick, Donnie has been sick, I haven’t seen most of my extended family, my mom just had major back surgery, and to top it all off, I’m now too sick to leave the house for long periods of time. I’m usually out finishing all my Christmas shopping and wrapping by the first weeks of December, and yet this year I find myself scrambling, out of breath and hobbling around with an IV pole, fighting through the exhaustion while I listen to my husband and son snore peacefully away, as the clock quickly approaches midnight. While I normally attend Christmas Eve services at my church, this year I watched a live stream from my bed, completely alone. That was followed up by a trip to the ER, a place I’ve visited 3 times in the last month.
As I watched the live stream of my church’s Christmas Eve service this morning, I found my heart faced an intense battle between bitterness and gratefulness. While pregnancy, for most women, is the most beautiful, exciting, fun experience their body will ever go through, I can’t help but think that my body is failing me. Or, an even more horrifying thought – I am the one failing my body. It has been heartbreaking to hear the doctors refer to my unborn child as a “parasite” because he will suck my body’s nutrient stores dry as I continue to become more ill. Just walking from my bedroom down the hallway to our living room feels like I’ve run a marathon. I don’t sleep well, I can’t eat normally or drink water, my blood pressure is constantly dropping so much I almost pass out, and I’m only halfway to the finish line.
Despite this bitterness, I feel intensely grateful. While countless other women face horribly traumatic circumstances during pregnancy, such as learning their baby has a birth defect or that they have suffered an unnoticed miscarriage, my baby is completely fine. While I was in the hospital for 2 weeks, nurses from labor and delivery checked his heart rate every day. I haven’t been able to listen to very much music lately due to my migraines, but the galloping sound of my baby’s heartbeat is the best rhythm I could ask to hear. I’ve had 4 ultrasounds over the last 21 weeks, and not one single time has there been an issue detected. At my 20-week anatomy scan, I watched in jittery excitement as the ultrasound technician counted 10 fingers and 10 toes and examined the intricate chambers of my baby’s heart. There’s only so long I can sit here and cry out of desperation and exhaustion before his tiny kicks and jabs remind me that no matter what I’m going through, he has been spared. My body isn’t failing. It’s doing everything it can to protect the most precious cargo it has ever carried.
As I think about “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” a beautiful carol from the seventeenth century, I know that although I am far from being “joyful and triumphant,” I am faithful. In the depths of my loneliness and sickness, I know that my hope is found in the miracle at Bethlehem. As beautiful and magical as the Christmas story is, that special baby certainly didn’t make his mother’s life easy. First, she had to endure the ridicule and astonishment of bearing a child out of wedlock. I can’t even imagine what she faced when she tried telling people she was pregnant with the king of the universe. And the icing on the cake? She had to travel almost 100 miles on foot at 9 months pregnant. Her pregnancy wasn’t glamorous or easy, and yet she pressed on knowing that the end result would be worth it.
Without the birth of that king, I wouldn’t be able to experience this pregnancy. My story is one of redemption. The baby at Bethlehem grew up to save the world – and eventually save me from a life on the verge of self destruction. God took the shattered pieces of a broken and abusive relationship and put them back together in a way that led me to finding the man of my dreams. Our unborn child is not a parasite, but rather a precious gift that stands as a symbol of the love we have for each other.
No matter what this holiday season holds, there is nothing holding me back from shedding the self-centeredness that comes from facing illness and uncertainty and running with all the strength left in me back to Bethlehem, falling to my knees with an intense adoration of my king.
