It’s a quiet Christmas Eve morning. There is fresh snow outside, my baby is asleep in the wrap, my husband is safe upstairs, on vacation from work for a whole week. The dogs are fed, which means Eller is already in a REM cycle in front of the fire. I’m drinking coffee and eating a piece of my grandmother’s coffee cake, which my Aunt Jane makes and sends to me since MeMe passed in 2008.

Tonight we will go to church to celebrate the amazing gift of God with us. Emmanuel. That the Lord of the Universe sent his son, as a human infant, to grow up and walk among us. To teach us. To show us how to love. And ultimately to go to the cross as the FINAL sacrifice for our sins.

It’s impossible to not think of Mary during this season, especially this year. As I hold Harry and see his eyelids flutter in sleep, or when he stretches his palms across my chest, or better yet, when he looks at my face and breaks out in a huge gummy grin, I wonder, oh how Mary’s heart must have burst. To cradle in her arms the living God! To know that she, for no discernible reason, found favor in the eyes of the Lord, and gave birth to his son.

It makes sense to me now, in a way that it never did before, why Jesus came as a baby. What is more hope-filled than a baby? What inspires goodness, dreams, prayers, HOPE, more than a baby?

But this season, I’ve been thinking a lot about Joseph, too. I was reading some of the Christmas story in Matthew last night, and it hit me in a way it never had before, that Jesus’ ancestry goes back to David by way of Joseph, his adoptive father. Thank you God for adoption! For adopting us as your sons and daughters. For allowing us to walk out the very miracle of it here in this life.

As I sat and watched this video on Facebook earlier this week, with Harry wrapped to me chest in the carrier, I couldn’t stop the tears from coming.

What hope, what joy they must have felt that night in the manger. God with us!

Hope tells us that it isn’t over.

On an adoption board that I read, a prospective adoptive mom posed the question: How do you keep from losing hope?

I never lost hope because I cling to the living hope. Hope lives inside of me. It is my heartbeat. I never lost hope because we are already MORE than conquerors.

He is able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ASK or imagine (Eph 3:20). I am here to tell you, from the other side of the river in the Promised Land, that He keeps His promises.

And yes, I realize that no, that doesn’t mean that everyone ends up a parent. I know enough to know that is not true. But if He placed that desire in your heart, He WILL see it to finish and someday all of the wandering in the land in between will make sense. It will scroll behind you like a filmstrip, your story and His story worked together across time and distance.

To all of you out there who are still waiting for that positive pregnancy test, for that call from the agency, my heart is full for you this morning. I get on my knees for you. I lift my hands to Yahweh who holds us all in his hands.

When the world seems in chaos, when it seems like you can’t stand to hear one more piece of unfair news,  I beg you to go to the foot of the cross. Smell the dirt, see the blood, dig your hands into it. It was done for you; it was all done for you.

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:11)

He is at work. Go to the manger tonight and SEE.