A Blizzard & A Baby - a Christmas story
This week, my friend got stuck in a blizzard. She was driving solo up the interstate and the weather quickly turned bad while she was still hours from home. Within minutes, she lost almost all visibility and any semblance of the few tail lights that she was following.
She made it to the next exit, which thankfully, had a sign for a hotel. (If you’re not familiar with where we live, both highway exits and hotels are few and far between.) She pulled off the highway and into the hotel parking lot only to find out that (cue the Christmas irony) there was no room at the inn.
With no other option, stranded and alone, she slept in her car.
As she told me this story, I was mortified.
Seriously, there wasn’t a single room available? There was no where else to go??
But when she told me, her side of the story was shockingly different.
She told me how coincidental it was that the heater in her car had just been fixed. She told me that because her heater had been broken that she had extra hats and gloves in the car. She even had a quilt she was able to wrap up in.
All in all, she said it wasn’t terrible. (God bless mountain women.)
I drove away from her house after hearing her story and couldn’t help but linger on the “no room at the inn” piece with Christmas just around the corner.
If I’m being honest, I’ve been a little sour towards the innkeepers (maybe even God) for the last 36 years about there being no room at the inn for Mary and Joseph.
My God (literally) you couldn’t make one stinking room available for them? Seriously, you made the universe and you can’t make one hotel vacancy for the teenager carrying your kid?
But maybe Mary didn’t see it that way. Maybe, like my friend in the blizzard, Mary could see all the silver linings that I couldn’t.
Maybe she was grateful for the private shelter God provided her, as oppose to delivering the blessed baby Jesus in the streets of Bethlehem.
If you’ve ever given birth or witnessed it, it’s not a pretty sight. There are fluids. There is yelling. It’s not pretty. We can Hail Mary all we want, but the whole point of Jesus’ birth was that he was human and he entered this world just like you and me. So yes, damn me for blasphemy if you’d like, but I believe there were fluids and yelling in that stable. Privacy appreciated.
Maybe she was grateful that her fiancé was by her side in that private moment.
A first century birth was hardly what we Americans know birth as today. Had she given birth in Nazareth, where she was from, Mary likely would have been surrounded by a midwife and only female family members. Knowing that Joseph wasn’t the baby-daddy would likely not have gone over well in Nazareth, so who knows where he would have been.
But Jesus’ birth, ironically, could have looked more of what we know birth in America to be today: a women in privacy, trying to push a baby out, squeezing the hand of the supportive man she loves.
Maybe she was grateful that it was late summer and the shepherds had their flocks out in fields leaving the stable vacant.
(Sorry if I just ruined that for you. SPOILER ALERT! Jesus wasn’t born on Dec 25th…we graciously adopted that date from a pagan holiday. Theologians estimate he was born in September. I’ll drop you a good reference link at the end of this.)
Had it been a colder month, the shepherds would have likely had their flocks sheltered and then there wouldn’t have been room in the inns or the stable (yikes).
Maybe, like he always does, God worked things out perfectly.
And maybe, like my friend who was grateful for her hat and quilt, Mary found gratitude right away too.
It was just me that took 36 years to get there.
Here, today, I’m so grateful for you and that you read this far. From me and my family to you and yours, we wish you a Merry Christmas.
Did I get some things wrong in this blog? Maybe. #didntgotoseminary Fact check me and shoot me a DM or email.
