Anxiety

People do weird shit when they get nervous. As for me, I tend to get this glazed over look in my eyes. I also do this thing where I take a side of my bottom lip and connect it with the top front tooth from the opposite side (hard to explain, you'd have to see.) Some people bite their fingernails. Some people become overly emotional trying to make things more or les ok.

During worship yesterday I had this thought; I wonder how Joseph acted at the birth of Jesus. If I'm to believe the nativity scenes that come out this time of the year, he must have been pretty calm during the whole ordeal. But if I'm to believe that the Christmas story was more grounded in reality than that, then it must have been a different scene. Because I've seen television show that depict how fathers get when children are born. I also remember the "holy shit" look on Kyle's face the first few months after the twins were born-- and it's not the nativity scene.

All I could think of yesterday as we were singing "here i am to worship, here i am to bow down, here i am to say that you're my god," was Joseph leaving the stable (or cave, or whatever) to get a breath of fresh air and to gather his thoughts. We know, if we are to take the Christmas narratives seriously and by faith, that an angel came months before to let Joseph know everything was ok, that God had done this to Mary. But how many times have we looked back on beliefs that we've had, even spiritual experiences, and doubted whether or not that was God or our own emotions trying to make sense out of the situation. It must have crossed Joseph's mind that he imagined the angel, and that it was something (namely, someone) else that had put Mary in this situation. And then when (and if) he decided that the angelic visitation was real, that still probably didn't ease his nerves any. He still had to have had the thought that if this is true, that God had a hand in the pregnancy of Mary, then I've got something extremely different on my hands than all the other Jewish fathers.... and now I'm responsible.

I can't imgagine that Mary and Joseph understood fully who their son was that first night they put him to bed, even though the circumstances surrounding the whole even were somewhat suspicious. But I am pretty sure that, over time, they began to make a little sense of things. When Mary encountered her risen son, all I can imagine is that his life, and everything surrounding it, flashed across her eyes. Suddenly, the angel made sense. The unexpected pregnancy made sense. All the weird and strange stuff made sense.

And for me, it suddenly made sense that we'd be singing "Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down, here I am to say that you're my God. You're altogether lovely, altogether worty, altogether wonderful to me," at Christmas. Because I'm sure that slowly, over time, these words, in some form or the other, were considered by Mary and Joseph.