A Special Address to Family and Friends

Dec 2022

Mary has been on my mind lately. Probably because Ellie and I blasted the Pentatonics version of “Mary Did You Know?” And sang it full volume the other night (by the way, if you haven’t looked up that rendition, do it) but also because Mary is the only person who ever became the mother of Jesus—Savior of the world.

God could have chosen Elizabeth, Mary’s older cousin. Elizabeth, who was older and faithful, and had been praying for a child. But instead he chose Mary, an unwed teenager. This choice jeopardized everything in her life.

Because sometimes the thing that jeopardizes everything might be evidence of God’s favor. As my friend Rachel wrote “Mary was highly favored by God. And then her life got harder.”

Last year for Christmas I asked for a cross stitch of a Charles Spurgeon quote I found on Etsy. It said “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.” I knew I needed this wisdom. It’s safe to say I have learned about affliction this year. But more powerfully, I learned about the peace of Christ, and more specifically, the peace that is available in affliction. I learned it, not in a theoretical way, as we all do, but in a living, breathing, day-by-day and surrender-by-surrender way. This year I have learned what trusting God with my life looks like personally. It has been a hard year. It has been the best year.

In August, Isabella packed up all her belongings and moved to Seattle to begin adult life and be near Aidan, the boyfriend she met in college early last year. She got a job at the front desk of a wax/beauty bar and two side hustles. Then in October she called to deliver some news. The same news I delivered to my mom twenty years prior. You know, whenever people meet me and find out I have an almost twenty-one year old daughter they always gasp with shock and say “you don’t look old enough to have a twenty year old!” So imagine the surprise they’ll have when I tell them I’m a Grandma... that’ll be a fun party trick.

I was an unlikely candidate for motherhood twenty one years ago. I was an unwed teenager working at Safeway bagging groceries. Likewise, Isabella is an unlikely candidate for motherhood now, although she does have a more glamorous job.

Isabella and I both find ourselves in circumstances we didn’t imagine last year. Mine, hard. Isabella’s, unexpected. Both, gifts.

A while ago, during a harder period for me (last Jan) I read 2 Corinthians 4:16 again:

“Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.”

This year I found comfort in the fact that, like the scriptures tell me, the affliction I experience now is temporary and light. This doesn’t mean what we experience can’t be brutal or heartbreaking. It just means that compared to Christ, who humbled himself to the point of leaving heaven and becoming a man, destined to die on a cross for sins he did not commit, who would contend with Satan himself and defeat death in the process, all because of his great love for us, the burden he is allowing me to bear right now is...not that. Further, he does not ask that I walk in affliction alone as Jesus did at one point (“Father why have you forsaken me?”), and even further still, he has promised to work out all things—even affliction— for His glory and the good of those who love Him. So even in catastrophic loss we can have hope. Against all odds, we can have joy. In all circumstances, we can have peace.

Mary was favored and chosen to birth the Son of God. Then she was favored and chosen to witness his crucifixion.

Favor doesn’t exclude us from hardship. But when our trust is in Him, He’ll see us through it, faithfully.

Ultimately, Mary was favored and chosen to see her Son rise and conquer death. But look at me, I’m skipping ahead to Easter!

For now, at Christmas, what is true for us was true two thousand years ago. There’s a baby on the way. There’s an unlikely mother. And there is trust being placed in the Rock of Ages.

And all is calm. All is bright.

Merry Christmas!
Love, Krysta