My First Christmas as a New Mother Was Not the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
For once the house was quiet. My two-month old daughter gifted me with the peace of closed eyes. I sat alone, trying to conceal my pain with the saccharine taste of a made-for-TV Christmas movie. The couple on screen were ballroom dancers—of course bound to fall in love that Christmas. The woman’s body moved like music, playing the part perfectly. Mine did not.
That Christmas, my body seemingly failed every test. It gave up its fight against the infection that spread for weeks. It failed to provide nourishment for my two-month old baby. My arms buckled under the strain of her car seat, and my fragile emotions collapsed under the grief of many stolen moments as a family. Instead of dancing, my body ached as I waited for my husband to bring home prescription spray to numb the open wound in my chest.
About a month after our first child was born, I was diagnosed with MRSA in my breast, which is a resistant staph infection. Though scary, the diagnosis finally solved the puzzling hospital visits and high fevers that preceded it. More hospital trips, procedures, and medicines were prescribed following the diagnosis. My body rejected each one, until surgery one December day. Each night of the following two months I would lie on the bed and shut my eyes tight, while my husband changed the gauze in the ten-centimeter-deep hole in my chest. That Christmas I faced the fragility and brokenness of my body every single day.
“That Christmas I faced the fragility and brokenness of my body every single day. ”
I know I’m not alone in this. While many rush about with holiday preparations, others view the season through the filter of pain. Those translucent orange bottles lining the counter remind us of our brokenness. The feasts at family get-togethers only trigger thoughts of the restrictions our chronic illness causes. The non-stop events and activities reveal the energy and strength our bodies now lack. We feel as if our frail bodies have stolen our memories, our joy, and now even Christmas from us.
Yet, it’s the Christmas story of the incarnation of Christ that specifically encourages those with hurting bodies this Christmas.
Facing Our Helplessness
The Christmas following my surgery I was very limited. My twenty-four-year-old self had to adjust to being waited upon, chauffeured, and watched very closely. Each week I sat in the car on the way to town, staring toward the window to hide the tears in my eyes while my husband’s grandfather drove me to my appointments. I felt helpless and, in so many ways, I was.
It’s difficult to accept helplessness—to accept you can’t do something that once came so easily. Yet this is exactly what our Savior took on when he took on flesh. The God of all creation willingly took on the experience of helplessness. If there is anybody who understands the stark differences we feel in our new limits, it’s the Word of God himself laying in a feed trough.
Though he set the stars in place by his wisdom, stretched out the heavens by his understanding (Jer. 10:12), and directed the way of kings and nations for generations (Prov. 2:1), on that first Christmas, the Son of God made himself low enough for his body to be helpless. He depended on nourishment from another. He physically needed to be picked up, carried, and washed. Our King took the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Phil. 2:7).
This idea is perhaps what makes Christianity one of the most unthinkable religions for some. In the second century, Celsus, an outspoken opponent to Christianity, proclaimed, “That God would take on a human body was most shameful and no lengthy argument is required to refute it” (quoted in Michael Kruger, Christianity at the Crossroad, 60). The entire idea seemed so ridiculous that it didn’t even warrant attention. Surely the most powerful being wouldn’t stoop low enough to take on a helpless human body. But incredibly, he did. He bore humanity for the joy set before him (Heb. 2:2). He bore our flesh in order to bring glory to the Father and to bring us back as his forgiven people. What seems ridiculous for doubters is the sweetest joy for his children. In love, he bore the helpless, limited body of a man like us.
Accepting Our Brokenness
Not only did Christ experience the frailty and helplessness of the human body but he also experienced the brokenness of one. Though he never sinned, Christ lived and walked amongst a broken world every single day. Because of sin’s presence in the world, life was not as it was created to be.
“My body was supposed to nurse and nourish my newborn daughter, not receive needles, scalpels, and gauze. ”
That first Christmas as a family was not what it was “supposed to be.” My body was supposed to nurse and nourish my newborn daughter, not receive needles, scalpels, and gauze. As her mother, I should have been changing diapers, playing silly games, and counting every first milestone instead of shuffling her to relatives while I went to doctor appointments. I should have had more energy and joy to celebrate our first Christmas instead of feeling the weight of sorrow for all I had lost. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
Those of us suffering through chronic pain often grapple with what isn't “supposed to be.” The brokenness of this world accosts us every day we wake. Yet we’re not alone. Christ lived, worked, and ministered in his body within a broken world. He grew tired, hungry, and even felt the emotional toll of sorrow and grief (Mark 4:38; Luke 4:2; John 11:35). He bore our humanity in every way so that he would be our high priest who could sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb 4:15). He felt the pain and brokenness of sin on our behalf to the point of an excruciating death upon the cross.
Our tears this Christmas over what is “supposed to be” fall before a God who understands. He not only sees them but the Christmas story also reminds us he experienced the frailty and pain of a body first-hand.
Turning toward Resurrection
The incarnation encourages us by showing how close our Savior is to our suffering bodies. He knows our helplessness in a fuller way than even we can understand. He, too, lived in the midst of brokenness, feeling pain and anguish. Yet the incarnation also reveals the hope we have. Christ’s body didn’t stay broken, but it was resurrected. He lived again, and because he lives, we will too (1 Cor. 15:20).
We can have confidence that this broken body we carry with us this Christmas is not all there is. For now we toil with broken bodies, but we await a future hope. Thomas Watson said it beautifully when he wrote,
Oh, blessed body! When I prayed, thou didst attend my prayers with hands lifted up, and knees bowed down; thou wert willing to suffer with me, and now thou shalt reign with me; thou wert sown in dishonour, but now art raised in glory, Oh, my dear body! I will enter into thee again, and be eternally married to thee.” (quoted in Michal Horton, Pilgrim Theology, 335)
The incarnation exclaims this body isn’t the end.
This Christmas, if you find yourself defeated over the limits of your body, remember you aren’t alone. Our Savior knows our pain. Christ in a manger bore the helplessness and brokenness of our creaturely world for our sake. And because he did, we can have the hope that these ragged bodies aren’t our final home. We can use our feeble arms to hug this Christmas. We can participate with our aching backs or our heavy hearts, knowing that those same arms, that same back, and that whole body will one day rejoice in the incarnation of our precious Savior without any pain.
Brianna Lambert is a wife and mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.