The songs we hum "Away In a Manger," "What Child is This," and "Silent Night" vibrate through our heads as sights of tranquil nativity scenes fill our souls and the soft excitement of a child fill our hearts.
Christmas has taken on a new significance for me, opened my awareness to levels of devotion I was previously unaware. My experience in becoming a mother has made me receptive to the magnitude of Mary & Joseph's role in the birth of Jesus.
Every mother assumes the role of Mary. It's easy to hold my son by the glow of a lighted tree (as Pagan as that may be) and imagine great things for him. I can only envisage what Mary must have felt knowing the true enormity of her child's presence.
But when we are consumed with this divine intuition we minimize the role of Joseph, relegating him to a shadowy character beside a manger. I can not help but to see my own husband in this role.
Not unlike Joseph, he has stood by my side through days of labor, watching and protecting both me and our son when I was incapacitated to do so at our own drawn out birth and recovery. While we have not had to flee to another country, he has worked hard and gone back to school in order to male all our lives better.
While times are vastly different, the family structure has not changed all that much. We are still spouses raising children (paying taxes) and often struggling with our spiritual journey. God blessed us with a son, and I have more faith through him than ever before.
I identify our family, our roles with their plight. Can you imagine the significance of raising a child, not of your loins, because an angel foretold that he would change the world? Yet Joseph remained constant to his faith and his wife.
Through our struggles with infertility and loss, Stephen has remained devoted...to me, to our future, to our dream of family. He has become the father I knew he would be. We will raise our son to be kind, hardworking, caring and tolerant. To know God and be the best man we can train him to be.
This Christmas I understand more truly the power of God's gift to the world, the courage of his earthly family, their faith and love for their child and heavenly appointment. This Christmas I remember and am filled with God's light to know how truly blessed I am. As Christmas day draws near, I wish for you all to know peace, joy and remember Jesus, and don't forget the love of father's.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that who so ever shall believe in him shall not perish but have ever lasting life." ~John 3:16
Merry Christmas
Also published at Bloggy Moms
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