I’m a strong person. Or at least, people perceive me as a strong person. It’s usually spoken as a compliment, but it’s actually kind of a problem.
Growing up, I would find somewhere to hide when I started crying — the back of a closet, buried behind the coats; beneath a wardrobe; when I was very young, behind the changing table. By the time I was out of diapers, no one would come to comfort me. My family saw me as independent; they knew I’d cry myself out and be fine. They believed that I was strong.
As an adult, not much has changed. On a medical leave of a few months, only two friends reached out. People told themselves that I would handle myself, that I was strong.
My partner is the only person who I allow to see me really cry, and it took over a decade together before I trusted him with that. He rubs my back or holds me and doesn’t say anything. More importantly, he doesn’t panic or get anxious. He just breathes and lets me feel my feelings, and stays with me through it.
I fell in love with him because I could feel his desire to grow my spirit. He was a stable place to stand as my ministry made me more visible; he encouraged me through each step of my education and career.
But now, I recognize that the biggest gift of love he gives me is allowing me to be vulnerable, to need care, to be fragile. In a world that expects and demands my strength, he gives me the gift of a place where I don’t need to be strong; I can just be me.
I wonder if this is the gift that Mary gives to the divine force of the universe when she says “yes” to the preposterous proposal of conception. If that Almighty Power really needed to be allowed to be small, to be seen not only as powerful but as vulnerable. In carrying, birthing, and caring for Jesus, Mary loves God by letting them shrink to the size of cells. She doesn’t love God by adoring how strong they are; she loves God by holding their weakness. She doesn’t offer God a throne, but a womb and a breast; her life, rearranged for the smallness of God, the mundane reality of tending to God one feeding at a time.
From the moment of incarnation, God is signaling to us that we’ve gotten it all wrong. We’re waiting for a powerful force to show up, deliver vengeance against our enemies, overthrow our oppressors. But that’s not the nature of God, as we find out alongside the disciples when they watch their Messiah tortured and murdered at the hands of the state. The nature of God is be honest about their need for care, their need for love.
Recently, I was reading the first book in bell hooks’ “love song to the nation,” All About Love: New Visions. In it, she writes that love is an action; she adopts psychologists’ definition of love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” By this definition, Mary certainly loves the divine, extending her body in a very literal way for the growth and nurturance of Jesus. Her ‘yes’ is for her spiritual growth, and also for another’s spiritual growth — Joseph’s, all humanity’s, God themselves.
Most of us don’t want a love that is this messy. We watch so-called romance movies with misunderstandings that will become cute, funny stories for the couple later on. We prefer clear communication and no one crying at inconvenient times.
But the love of Advent invites us into a love like the one that Mary models for us. Advent invites us to make room for another’s vulnerability, even when it complicates entire belief systems, even when it means giving up the desire for a powerful divinity who will make the world “right.” A love that costs us our comfort, and comes with no guarantees.
This week, I’m wondering about where I need to love more like Mary. Where do I see someone as powerful over me, and could I be invited to see their smallness — their hurt, their fear? Where am I holding my life so tightly that no one else’s needs can fit? Where might I find a little space to care for, to carry, another?
And, of course, because I buy into the own myth of my strength, I must also wonder about how I might learn about spiritual growth from God’s move into the womb. What power do I have that I can recognize and use differently, share, or perhaps set aside? When might I need to ask for more space, instead of trying to accommodate everyone around me? Where do I need to ask to be carried, even if just for a moment?
If God chooses smallness, maybe love does too. Strength shouts, but love whispers. Strength screams its certainties, but love arrives the way God did in Mary: a dream, a word, utterly dependent on others.
The turning point of history is a newborn’s wail at the harshness of the world, in the arms of a no-status woman in the garage of a nothing town. That’s the whole point. Love grows in the most vulnerable places — of ourselves, and of the world. That’s how God came near once. It’s where God comes near now.
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