Nativity and the Heart of God

Christmas became an interesting time for me this year. I say "interesting" in a very Minnesota-passive-aggressive way. You know...

"That's an interesting sweater choice."
"He's an interesting fellow."
"What an interesting idea."

Those times in which "interesting" really means just about anything but.

So let me try again.

Christmas took on a unique kind of loss-fueled joy for me this year. And though it has everything to do with all the chatter of virgin births and images of a round belly covered in soft blue robes, it's not what you think it is. The concept of Jesus' arrival as an infant doesn't cause hurt in a new way in the face of our infertility diagnosis, not really. I mean - God as baby is never something we'd dreamed of and hoped for. It's a hope that's already been fulfilled. Nothing lost there.

Instead, I am reminded of journals I'd written years ago in which I marveled that one day (someday) I would know a little of what Mary felt. That I would understand what it was like to carry a child inside and wonder what he or she might become. That I would feel her same pain and joy. That she and I would have some unique bond that "all women" share.

I am quickly realizing just how many women are excluded from "all women" - and it's something I never would have been so sensitive to before. And I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful that rather than connecting with Mary who is long dead, I instead get to connect to women here today who are hurting in much the same way that I am.

But there's something even better.

So much better.

And I'm still only beginning to grasp it.

I may not have this mystical, biological connection to Mary that, for whatever reason, I always dreamed about. That's true.

But God (if there ever were two better words in life, I haven't met them yet)...But God adopted us.

God, in the ultimate show of love and the ultimate triumph over grief and despair, calls us children of Light when we otherwise would be children of Darkness.

As Zack and I prayerfully and tentatively reach out to the new world of adoption, I'm realizing that instead of connecting with Mary, I am being drawn into deeper understanding of the heart of God. It's a part of God I wouldn't be exploring so intimately without this push.

I'm learning that God's longing to bring us into His kingdom is powerful enough to take the hard road. (Adoption, we are discovering, is like wading into a war zone where you try to make sure you take as many stripes as you can to protect the child in the midst of it...and we're only at the point of emotionally diving into adoption; already we're feeling the winds start to pick up.) I'm understanding in a very real way how God's adoption of us isn't an addition tacked onto His "real" family - it is His best. It's Him stamping his name indelibly over our hearts, a shining beacon saying, "This one...this one's mine. And I'll fight like hell if you try to take them away from me because I fought hell to get them here."

So Christmas was interesting this year.

I'm letting go of what I thought I knew and making room for so much more than I thought was possible. My scope has been widened to include more. It's a more that we don't often hear about or celebrate. It's a more that has been illuminated this year by strings of lights and a child in a manger, one who came to this world to sign our adoption papers with his blood.