Be a Mary!

“Let me be a Mary!” I wrote this as a prayer in my devotional book one day this week.  I was seated in the closet-sized room Sue and I call our office, taking a moment to catch my breath as the currents of a busy day swirled around me.

It’s easy to feel strong when surrounded by friends, when there’s time to read good books, or when I’m able to take care of myself and get enough sleep.

But sometimes…. when I haven’t been able to sleep much… when a patient is ungrateful for the care they are receiving… when I am being belittled…. when the demands on my time are excessive… when the powers of the tangible world seem to be so strong…when fear strikes me…. my faith wavers.

This was just such a moment, there in that closet-office, with the one window high in the wall, out of which I sometimes watch the clouds.

I was thanking God for being with me during a sticky moment at the hospital that morning, during which I had failed briefly.  But then I had stepped away and caught myself and asked God for help and I was able to stay strong.  God, it was you who brought me back, I wrote.

And then, do you know what I thought?

Yes.

Was it really God? Or am I just getting better at knowing what to do? 

This thought flashed through my mind so quickly! And in mental agony–knowing that it HAD BEEN GOD!–I cried out on the page, Help my unbelief! I do believe. God make me a Mary!  

Then, I realized that the word “Mary” meant several things to me. I don’t even remember who I thought of first.

I want to be a Mary, like my neighbor, who always believes God!  Like her, I want to face insurmountable physical challenges with prayer.  I want to pray for something with such confidence that I know that God is hearing my prayers, that I know He will answer in some way.  Like her, I want to be able to sense the answers before they happen…to walk out on my porch to get the mail, and know that God has a surprise for me hidden in the NIPSCO bill.   Like her mother, I want to be able to say, “It doesn’t matter who’s racist as long as YOU’RE not.” Quite a statement for a black Mississippi mother in the middle of the 20th century.  Like her, I want to be able to wake up and tell someone, “God has a blessing for us today”, even though I don’t know that I’m about to get three new appliances from Menards, for free. Like her, I want to take responsibility and believe God and say of the free Thanksgiving basket from a charity, “Those are for people who don’t have food.  We have food, we just don’t have a turkey…” and then to continue to believe that God would bring a turkey, until he did.

I want to be Mary!

I want to be a Mary, like the mother of Jesus, who also believed God!  Like her, I want to face insurmountable emotional and social pressure with prayer, the voice of thanksgiving.  I want to look at the angel messenger, after blurting out my astonishment, and simply say, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” (I’m afraid I could think of at least 50 questions that I would like to have asked the angel before making that statement, if I had been her. What will Joseph say? Will I be stoned to death? Why can’t I just live a normal life like everyone else?)  Like her, I want to run to my friends, even in the middle of this emotional roller coaster, and thank God.  As Edward Hays says in Chasing Joy, “Mary’s song of gratitude rejoices extraordinarily in the God who placed her in the embarrassing circumstance of being pregnant without being married!”  Like her, I want to hold out the whole way…not just at the manger when the rich people are bringing presents, not just at the wedding when the water is becoming expensive wine, but all the way to the cross, when blood is flowing and all hope seems to have vanished.  Did Mary lose hope at the cross?  Did she ask the question I asked the other day in the office, Was this really from God?  I don’t know.  But perhaps she knew God so well from those earlier days, that she was able to look back and say, I know God is with us.  I don’t know what’s happening, but I know Who’s in charge.  Be it according to your word.  

I want to be a Mary!

I want to be a Mary like my friend from church who slipped home to be with God in her sleep this week.  Like her, I want to have a continual smile on my face.  Like her, I want to crave God’s presence until my very last days.  Like her, I want to be uncomplaining even if the doctors are telling me that there is nothing more they can do for me.  I went to visit her in the hospital a few times, and the nurses told me, “She’s such a sweet woman.” Like her, I want to have that relationship with my family and friends that people want to come see me, that there are too many visitors and they have to be rationed.  Those of us who work in healthcare have seen the people who have no one.  That wasn’t Mary…I received a message or two on our church hot line saying, “We can’t have too many visitors, Mary needs to rest.” Some people don’t have that problem, because there is no one who would want to come.  Like her I want to rely on the family of God.  I want to crave being with other Christians.  I want to die in my sleep, slipping peacefully home.   Like her, I want to be strong the whole way home.  I want to ask for prayer if I sense my faith is wavering even in the last hours of my life.  I want to be independent and strong, like she was, living in her own home even at an advanced age.  I want to say, like she did repeatedly in these last weeks, “I see the lights of heaven!”

I want to be a Mary!

Give me the love that leads the way! Amy Carmichael prayed on paper years ago.  And perhaps that is what each of these Marys had in common…an uncommon love for God, which converts to a love for others, which always, always, leads the way.

And then, on my last day of work this week, I was with Dr. Halloran checking on a post-op valve surgery patient when my phone rang.

“It’s Mary,” my co-worker said. “Where are you?”

“In critical care east,” I said.

“I have some cookies for you,” she said. “They’re eggnog cookies.  I’m over in my office but I’ll bring them over.”

She brought them over.  Eggnog cookies are yet another way of showing love that leads the way!  I’ll show you a photo of them…er, um, of it.  There’s only one left!

This Christmas Eve, when physical needs strike, be a Mary who believes God.  When God asks something of you that is impossible by earthly standards, be a Mary who sings a song of praise before the drama is over.  When you face illness or death, be a Mary who holds strong to the end.  When you have blessings, be a Mary who walks across the building to share them with someone else.

Merry, merry Christmas Eve!

I will leave you with the stanza from Amy Carmichael, a prayer that I take for my own, from her poem “Flame of God.”

Give me the love that leads the way,

The faith that nothing can dismay,

The hope no disappointments tire

The passion that will burn like fire.

Let me not sink to be a clod;

Make me They fuel, Flame of God!