Much of this post was taken from an earlier post of the same title, which can be read here. Since walking the Camino de Santiago, I have had additional thoughts about Mary, and wanted to share something slightly different about her this Christmas.

One of my favorite Christmas albums was recorded by Roger Whittaker, and is inauspiciously titled The Roger Whittaker Christmas Album. It was a staple in my home as a child and each Christmas I make sure to play the songs while I bake cookies and decorate the tree. I’m not sure I can pick a favorite track from the album, but one that always moves me to tears is Whittaker’s Mary song, Mama Mary. Throughout each verse, the singer asks Mary, “How did you feel?” Focusing Mary’s experience of being the mother to the long-expected baby is what grabs me about the song. When he asks, “Tell me, how did you feel when the angel came to the garden?” or “When you arrived in Bethlehem to hear them say; no room, no table, stay in the stable; tell me how did you feel?” he isn’t focused on the baby at all. He wants to know what Mary thinks of it all.

It is this question that I would ask Mary, too. We seldom see the messiness of Mary, instead favoring the images of a happy mother and child. This image of Mary is carved in stone throughout the world, with just as many paintings of her serenely holding the baby. But the Mary depicted as calm, the one who holds Jesus without a drop of sweat on her face, is at odds with the Mary that Roger Whittaker asks, “How did you feel?”

Mary, I’m certain, might have a lot to say about how she felt. There was a long and difficult road she walked before she beheld him, before she wrapped him in her arms and cradled him against her chest. Before the miracle that we now call Christmas, she spent months carrying him—months that I imagine were full of wonder, but just as easily could have been filled with doubt and fear. When she visited her cousin Elizabeth, was she hiding? When Joseph planned to divorce her, did she know? Did she have a plan for what she would do? Did she travel to Bethlehem worrying about giving birth before they arrived? When her labor began, did her her stomach sink?

I’ve had the honor of assisting women in birth when I worked as a doula. No matter where or how a baby is born, there is always a moment when the mother says, “I can’t do this.” She is always wrong of course, but I would never say so. Instead, I would remind her that she can. I told numerous mothers, “I’m watching you do it.” I asked them to surrender. “Don’t fight with the pain,” I coached. “Let it carry you.”

How did you feel, Mary? I imagine her not as serene or accepting, not calm and pristine and beautiful. When I think of Mary and the infant Jesus, I think of the birth, the marathon level of physical work that goes into it. I imagine Mary, told that she must sleep where the animals sleep, laboring among them. This Mary cries out in desperation. She doubts her strength. She ignores the world around her to survive the agony. Which women did Joseph find to attend her? Did they remind her of her strength as she squatted, dripping with sweat, shaking and puking from the pain, to push her son into the world? Did they wipe her brow? Did they give her a sip of water? Did they let her clutch their arms until her knuckles were white? What items did they place in her mouth to bite as she bared down? Did she cry out, “God! Please make it stop!”

I think about afterwards, when the shepherds came to see the baby. How many times had Mary nursed her son? Was he screaming from hunger? Was she weeping with frustration? Which woman showed her how to hold her breast so he could suckle? Had she already delivered the afterbirth? Was she still bleeding? Did she lose the color in her lips when she tried to stand, or when a midwife pressed her abdomen? Was she aching from a tear? She wouldn’t have had ice packs, or witch hazel pads, a peri-bottle, or a sitz bath; what did they give her for the pain?

I know this Mary, because she is me. This Mary has been through hell, who has done the messy, exhausting work of birthing the Christ child, of laboring to bring hope. She must work, harder than she has ever worked, to bring joy. She doesn’t trust herself; she doubts the power she has been given. She focuses on the agony of the moment to get through it without coming undone. She cries out “how much longer?” She screams, “I can’t do this.”

The desperate Mary in labor does not know the joy of the serene Mary holding the baby, just as Mary holding the baby forgets the nerve-shattering experience that brought him to her arms. Yet, she is the same woman. This is how hope enters the world. It comes in desperation. It comes among pain. It comes through fatigue and blood. It comes in the night, when an end is nowhere in sight. Afterall, if there was nothing awry, what would we need hope for?

In each chorus of Mama Mary, Whittaker sings, “Oh mama Mary, we wish you joy!” Who would not wish joy for someone who had been through harrowing trials, who now holds hope in their arms? Hope does not come from nowhere. It is born through great adversity. Hope, fragile just like a newborn baby, is a tender, precious thing.