Friends. I’m back from a summer hiatus (because writing and kids are mutually exclusive). Consider the audio version as I believe it captures the meaning best. If you prefer to rebel, the text waits for you below.
My firstborn excels at snatching insects from the air.
It’s a skill set on par with meme fluency and the ability to keep up with the light-speed lyrics of Hamilton. I’m in awe of these aptitudes, and how they persist despite our shared DNA. So, I wasn’t surprised when this same kid snatched a moth fluttering about our family room, cracked the door, and with an open hand procured its freedom. It was a glorious liberation to behold—for about two seconds—until a robin swooped in for her mid-day snack. A chorus of nervous giggles and remorse rang through our home.
That was three years ago.
Now I sit in this same space alone. Open and empty handed, I sob the refrain.
I see you, there: Fighting the muscle memory of a closed fist—
as you slide into your car, next to a seat that’s as empty as your heart.
I hear your exhale as you slam the refrigerator door on the carton of grapefruit juice that no one else will drink.
I feel the “pinpricks to your heart”1 as you rewind that out-of-pocket thing they said—and long to hear it just one more time.
“Vainly we search around the vacant place.”
– Jane Austen
How do we endure these hauntings from the life we once had, with the ones we once held?
We go to Costco.
You didn’t misread that. Costco.
But this time, we go it alone.
“Nothing like embracing the Christmas spirit here in September” I smirk at two women pushing carts beside me. The aisle ahead pulls us into its orbit with a tinseled tree.
One chuckles. The other nods.
“It stresses me out,” she confesses, “I’m so not ready!”
But according to Costco, we should be. We recognize the ridiculousness of it all but can’t resist its allure, like bugs to LED lights. Suddenly, I’m lifting my toddler out of the cart while a tiny index finger pokes every shimmering bulb. I blink and this little one, grown and thousands of miles away, won’t return until Christmas Eve.
I’m so not ready either, I think.
My friend Kaia and I used to keep a list of Christmas songs we despise. We marveled at how the worst of them garnered the most air time during their holiday radio hijacking. Why, we wondered, is Whams! “Last Christmas” played on loop? We deduced that many cringeworthy Christmas songs, despite noble intentions, were emotionally manipulative—like “Christmas Shoes,” and “So this is Christmas?” Blending a children’s choir with Christmas pop is like reaching into your stocking only to pull out a leftover tootsie roll from Halloween. It kills the mood.
Then there’s “Mary Did You Know?”
Friend, forgive me. I get it. It’s a rhetorical question aimed more at us than her. But can we settle this? She didn’t. Let’s stop asking, so we can consume Christmas in peace. But here in the bowels of Costco’s Christmas—or wherever it is we go to medicate the pain—our pinpricked hearts hurt again. I long to ask the mother of Jesus a different set of questions. Some she can actually answer:
How did you release the One who held your heart? How, after a lifetime of letting go, did it keep on beating?
So far, she’s given no reply. Mary keeps her cards close to her chest, and maybe that’s a good thing: We have to search her Scriptural scenes to discover the primer for her pain. What we do find is not the abrupt loosening of a tightly-clinched fist,
but a slow, finger-by-finger release. . .
Mary’s Thumb
Have you heard the one about the girl who boards a plane for Tokyo but lands in Stockholm instead?
Mary was off to Tokyo:
“A virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David.” (Luke 1:27) Here is the beginning of all that was predictable and expected. Then the angel Gabriel enters stage right, and everything changes in an instant. Welcome to Stockholm, Mary, where an unwed pregnancy brought about by the Holy Spirit will culminate in the birth of the “holy one, the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35) How did Mary respond to this tsunami of unmet expectations that crashed over her Tokyo plans? No ramen, no Shibuya Crossing, no itinerary:
“I am the Lord’s servant . . . May your word to me be fulfilled.” (Luke 1:38)
What?
With these words, Mary steps onto the gravel road outside of Stockholm. In Tokyo there were hotel reservations and a high-speed train from the airport. Here, Mary morphs from tourist into displaced hitchhiker. With a crumpled itinerary in one hand, Mary loosens her grip and pops up her thumb with the other. Somehow, she trusts the new plan in play. God’s plan. This road will not be for the faint of heart. With this fraught beginning, she surely suspected that. Mary will follow it to the strangest of places: Bethlehem, Egypt, and eventually to the foot of a cross.
Her Ring Finger
My husband proposed to me on a Venetian Gondola—
in Vegas, where a channel of chlorinated water cuts through a replica of the Floating City.
We were young, and tickets to the real deal were out of the question. When asked, we leaned into this technicality and still scripted a stellar engagement story. All that really mattered to me was that I returned home with a ring—the promise of a lifetime together.
Not so for Mary. Yes, she was betrothed to Joseph, but now pregnant prior to her union with him. I’d love to know Mary’s mind as Gabriel met her with God’s message. Did she count the social costs of an unwed pregnancy? Mary was to name her child Jesus, translated “God saves.” But would God save her from the fragile fate of a plummeting reputation? How did she handle this loss?
She didn’t go to Costco, Venice, or Vegas.
Instead, with her ring finger loosened—like her reputation—Mary runs for the hills. She “hurried” to Judea’s hill country (Luke 1:39) and found her cousin Elizabeth, who had also miraculously conceived. When they meet, Mary responds not with an anthem of angst, but with a song of praise:
“‘My soul glorifies the Lord,” she responds,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.’” (Luke 1:46-48)
I’ll be honest: My default song here would sound less like the Magnificat and more like a Wham! holiday rant. I’d nurse my hurting pride and try to salvage my ruined reputation in front of an esteemed cousin. I’d blame someone else for it, like George Michael did.
Not Mary. With everything to lose, she sings instead about the Savior who sees her.
We know the rest. The God who is “mindful” of Mary’s state reveals His plan to Joseph. Joseph abandons his own to break off the engagement and still chooses Mary for a lifetime together. (Matthew 1:18-25)
Her Pinky
In the early months after birth, the grasping reflex literally takes hold. With many thankless and sleepless nights, the feel of your little one’s tiny figures wrapped around your own is magical. We hold on to them, and they to us.
But not always.
I watched in awe last week, as a dad exited the grocery store. With one hand he steered a cart that held groceries and his newborn inside. The other clasped tightly to an unobliging toddler who valued shiny fenders over her own safety: “I know you want to touch all the cars,” he reasoned with his wailing child, “but the parking lot is a dangerous place.” He’ll blink, I tell myself, and she’ll be driving a car instead.
We hold fast to what we love until we can’t.
Of all the new baby advice I received, a veteran mother’s whisper to me as I held our firstborn in my arms remains: “They’re not really ours, you know. They’re His. We just have them on loan.”
About a month after Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph brought him to Jerusalem for his consecration. At the Temple, prophets Simeon and Anna both met the Messiah. “Moved by the Spirit,” Simeon “took him in his arms and praised God.” (Luke 2:28) We’re tempted, as we read Luke’s account, to dive into Simeon’s emotional refrain. But then we miss what happens just before: They handed Jesus over. The tiny fingers that clung to parents’ pinkies—the One nestled in their arms—rested in another’s. Holding the Savior, Simeon praised God for His promises, kept. “For my eyes have seen your salvation.”
Sounds promising so far. But then to Mary:
Friends, this would be my cue to snag the little bundle back; like when a well-meaning adult begs to hold your infant and proceeds to sneeze on them. Only worse. Luke tells us that Jesus’ parents “marveled” at Simeon’s first words. (Luke 2:33) But did they grieve his last?
How did Mary endure this prescription for pain? Scripture leaves another vacuum here, but it also doesn’t pull the curtain down. The prophetess Anna steps onto the stage. With a chorus of “thanks to God,” she heralds Jerusalem’s redemption. (Luke 2:38)
God, as Job declared centuries before, takes away. But he also gives. (Job 1:21)
Living as a widow for most of her life, Anna trusted him for that. So did Simeon, as he approached the end of his own. Maybe Mary could too, as the One whose tiny fingers wrapped around her pinky was hers to hold again—just not have.
The Middle Finger
A few months ago, I witnessed the unthinkable: I turned my head to see one of my kids flipping off the other.
Tweens exhibit the extremes of human nature. In one moment, they’re capable of deep thought, flashes of brilliance, and extravagant generosity. But the halo vanishes seconds later when they refuse to pick up dirty socks, or—yeah—flip the bird in the throes of sibling rivalry. This pushback on power is maddening but also developmentally appropriate. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. . .
According to Luke, Jesus was only twelve when he stayed back at the Jerusalem temple (a later visit), knowing that his family left for home without him. The Gospel writer captures Mary and Joseph’s angsty conversation with Jesus when they finally found him again:
“They were astonished. His mother said to him, ‘Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.’” (Luke 2:48)
Sound familiar? I confess I’ve laid on the parental guilt like this before.
“‘Why were you searching for me?’ he [Jesus] asked. ‘Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?’ But they did not understand what he was saying to them.” (Luke 2:48-50)
On the surface, this conversation resembles a pre-teen power play, but Luke clarifies that there’s more to this story. Jesus is flexing his power, but it is his divine, earthly authority to flex. It’s amusing, here, to imagine Mary and Joseph’s facial expressions after Jesus’ reply. Parents in the trenches, take heart: Mary and Joseph didn’t get a playbook, either. We can only speculate, but Luke’s words a few lines later reveal a clue. As her son continues to grow and let go, Mary “treasured all these things in her heart.” (Luke 2:51) She couldn’t hold him forever, but she could cherish each moment in the meantime and reflect back on them in the years to come with a deeper understanding. Even the time He chose His Father’s house over her own.
An Index Finger
Yesterday, a bright speck soaring over the cottonwood trees caught my eye. It left me feeling lonely. Solitary balloons on the breeze are synonymous with loss. Someone, somewhere, somehow let it go. The memory of my own child’s tear-stained face pricks my heart: There was a birthday balloon, strung loosely around an index finger—and my brilliant idea to open our minivan’s sunroof. You feel your child’s pain, but even more so when you’ve caused it.
I wonder if Mary connected the dots, standing close to the cross that held her son. Could she fathom that he hung there for her? Jesus’ disciple John records only that she witnessed his suffering. Some, like Mary, anguished. We are left to imagine that others scoffed and pointed fingers in the wrong direction. How could she look on as her son was “despised and rejected”? (Isaiah 53:3). Even as He suffered, Jesus met his mother in the middle of her pain. The God who saw Mary from the beginning calls from the cross: “‘Woman, here is your son,’” and to John, ‘Here is your mother.’ (John 19:25) As her child lovingly lets go, Mary does too. Open handed, Mary can receive the care of her son’s trusted friend.
There is giving and taking away.
There is a clenched fist and an open palm.
Light in the shadow of the cross.
For Mary, and for us, always both.
“There’s not enough room in this world for my pain.”1 (Indigo Girls/"Ghost”)
My kids still bring up that moment with the moth. Years later, it spawns giggles and remorse as we recall that fatal catch-and-release. I hold my breath in and hold out for Christmas Eve, so maybe we can relive it again face-to-face. Life and loss, you see, are comorbid. Just ask George Micheal—who sitting somewhere beneath a pink Christmas tree—will soon flood the airwaves sobbing his haunting refrain:
“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart. But the very next day, you gave it away.”2
Did Mary know this too?
After a lifetime of letting go, I suspect she did.
She knew that,
crumpled itineraries and forfeited expectations give way to trust,
in a plan we wouldn’t choose,
from the God who sees us even from a cross.
Trust, that He won’t leave us empty-handed,
as we loosen our grip on things that were never ours to keep,
so we can receive what has been ours all along:
Him.
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What a "brutiful" thing it is to be a parent. Thank you for your beautiful and thoughtful and heartfelt words Nikki. ❤️
This is brilliant and beautiful. Thank you. 💕