Advent and Pregnancy

I have a new post up at Christianity Today’s women’s blog, her.meneutics. Here is a sampling:

“…we rarely remember that Advent is essentially the last month of Mary’s pregnancy—that time wherein excitement and anticipation is so great that it is separated from grief, even despair (will this baby ever come?) by a mere thread. Unlike me, unlike Kate Middleton, and, chances are, unlike you, Mary didn’t have Preggie Pops or Sea-Bands for her first trimester nausea, prenatal vitamins to stave off tooth and bone loss and the urge to chew on newspapers, or pregnancy yoga and massage to ease her aches and pains. Nor did she have the knowledge that expert care stood at the ready should anything go amiss. In giving life to Jesus, she encountered the very real specter of her own death.

For most women in history, the anticipation of a child was a mixture of joy and fear; and for a good many women in the world today, this is still the case. Mary’s faith is all the more remarkable when we consider all that she didn’t have to comfort and assure her of her safety. When we remember this, the final weeks of pregnancy—Advent—are as sober as they are expectant and joyful.”

Read the rest of the post here.