Growing up as a christian in a christian nation, I was very early aware of the traditional Christmas themes and celebrations. As a young child I remember being part of the annual Christmas pageants in school and church, which usually involved a cute reenactment of the birth of Christ in the manger. An adorable Joseph holding the arm of a small Mary with a pillow under her night robe. Angels, shepherds, kings and all the animals whimsically standing by the new born babe, usually a blond, blue eyed doll in a laundry basket.
I never questioned this sanitized version of the account of the birth of Christ until as an adult I found myself in the jungle. I was helping a young tribal girl delivering her first baby. She was about 14, lived in a small, mud hut, in a tiny isolated village.
Like Mary.
A frightened child, trying to understand the pain wracking her body Some of the very young girls cry out for their mothers. One 12 year old did not speak for three days after going through a difficult birth. Squalor around about, the dirt floor becomes soaked with blood and fluid and as times goes by, it begins to smell. The dust of the palm roof drops down upon your heads, littering the place with dust and insects. Dogs, pigs and chickens wander in the hut, rooting about.
Anywhere that houses animals will not be clean or smell nice. Mice and rats are a given in such a place. In the jungle, we must build a small smoldering fire near the laboring mother to ward off the insects attracted by the body fluids involved in a birth, even if the temps are 100*F, we need the fire nearby. No fan, no AC, no running water, no comfy bed with soft linens, merely an old, stringy hammock or a seat on a spongy, banana stalk cut for just that purpose.
And in the case of Mary, not even a wiser, older woman to help. Just Joseph.
After sharing the birth experiences of young girls in the jungle, I have a new appreciation for Mary, the teen girl who found herself pregnant and unwed, far from home, in pain, probably missing her mother.
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7 comments:
You and your family are saintly people to answer the call to help humanity under those conditions. God bless you all.
Honestly, it seems we humans always go to exremes with Jesus: We either try to sanitize everything and make him so ethereal and above-it-all that He was not human. (See that halo?) We try not to believe that He never passed gas or stubbed His toe or snored. He never bled...
OR, we go the opposite way and make Him so human He ceases to be Divine - just a good man, a dedicated prophet, a love-sick single.
I so praise God that Jesus was indeed, human and that He could identify with our weaknesses and be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. I am also thankful (very!) that He was/is God and never sinned and that He conquered death!!
We use the word "God-send" a lot, but you truly were a God-sent to those girls in their time of need. What a wonderful comparison to Mary's experience, and I'm sure you're dead-on. No nurses in scrubs, no sanitized cloths and epidurals. Thanks for sharing.
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are feeling better and better each day.
I'm with cube..you're saints, whether you like to hear it or not :-) Big love to you and yours, JM. z
I always think about those things regarding Mary as well. Its something we can't understand very well these days, so its helpful to hear your perspective.
Amen to Groovy's comment!
I have thought a lot about child birthing in bad conditions. It is too easy to think that somehow if an emergency happens all pregnancies and child birthing will be postponed until everything is back to normal. Most folks don't have a serious long term supply of contraceptives and expecting couples to be abstinent is about as realistic as expecting congress to pass a balanced budget. I really hope my wife or loved ones never have to give birth in such conditions.
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