“The babe we are to cherish”

It was a difficult time in my life. I was praying deeply about my yearning to be a mother. Every day leading up to the holidays, I would read the Gospel story of Jesus’ birth, of his mother Mary’s courage and her trust in God. I hungered for that same humble trust. I wanted to accept my Father-Mother God’s purpose for me and the pure desire to mother, to love more unselfishly, that She had put in my heart.

One very cold night, I walked out of our house to see the sky scattered with a bazillion stars. I thought of how Mary, two thousand years earlier, had accepted her own place in the historic narrative of motherhood—under the same constellations. 

Her path hadn’t been easy. There was the angel Gabriel’s message that didn’t make any human sense (see Luke 1:30–32), fearful circumstances, a long journey, nowhere to give birth but in a stable—and King Herod and his spies were pursuing her family. But she trusted God. I asked myself, “Do you trust God’s promise? Do you trust that what God put in your heart about motherhood is actually the seed of a new life of love and healing growing in you?”