Thinking of Mary (when there's no room)

I have been teaching Kindergarten Sunday School for the past few months and as you can probably guess, we were discussing the birth of Jesus this past weekend.

I was thinking about the Inn and the strangeness of the story... not having a place to go... no room in the Inn.  And then I realized something...

Bethlehem was super crowded.  People would have been filling every nook and cranny.  There may have been room for two people, but there was no room for a woman in labor. 

Labor is big.  It is messy. 

There is noise and nudity, profanity and pain.  There are hours and hours, waves of intensity and exhaustion.  There are bodily fluids and blood. 

No, there was no room in a crowded inn for that.

Who attended Mary as she labored?  It would probably not have been Joseph.  Men did not have anything to do with births for most of history.  Husbands being present is a new phenomenon.  Was the inn keeper's wife there?  Was a midwife?  Many midwives?  Did a group of women from the Inn or community come to comfort and attend this young mother, like a radiant angelic host?  Was she alone?  Did she labor in quiet?

I find myself, once again at a place where something has been growing inside me, though I don't know what it is....  Something that will need to emerge and be born in pain and joy, in sorrow and excitement.  Sometimes, the places we go to cannot hold the things that are being born.  Sometimes we end up outside the space in which we meant to reside.  Sometimes we go to a dirty and messy place where we labor in waves of intensity and exhaustion.  There is profanity and pain.  There is also beauty and joy.

And at the end of the long night, as light is breaking through, we hold in our arms something precious that came to be.  Something that couldn't be contained in the crowded inn where we planned to stay.  Sometimes we need more room.

There was no room in the inn for the Light of the World to burst forth.  There was no room in the inn for the angelic host, for the shepherds, for all of creation.  For the cries and screams, the sweat and pain.  For the agony and beauty.  No room.

Sometimes there is no room within our comfort zone.  No room within our experience.  Sometimes we have to be turned away from where we had hoped to stay in order to have the glorious birth of a new thing, a new life, a new creation.

Mary labored.  We do not know how many hours or who attended her, but we know that her labor changed the world. 

How horrible it would have been for her if they had made room in that crowded inn.  The glory of the story is outside, where there was room.

As this year comes to a close and you look at your life and think about the future, may God show you where there is room for the things that He is birthing in and through you.  And when there is no room for your labor in one space, may God show you the glorious stable, where space abounds.

Peace and Blessings to you this Christmas.