Not Feeling So Special

“I don´t feel very special.” If I were Mary, that is probably what I would say. Here she was a young girl, engaged to a good guy, when the angel Gabriel brought her some life-changing news. He said, “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” Gabriel also told her, “Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.” Then he proceeded to tell her that she, though a virgin, would be gifted the promised Messiah as her baby. (Luke 1)


In retrospect, I look back at her and think that Gabriel was right.  Mary got to birth the Savior of the World. What an honor that had to have been!


I can’t help but wonder, though, if Mary questioned the “highly favoured” or “blessed among women” status at times. Perhaps she questioned being special. I suspect that she did. Maybe, she even felt the exact opposite of special.

Scared 

The first thing that Gabriel told her was not to be afraid. That didn’t work. She immediately fled to her older cousin Elizabeth, who was also expecting. She spent her first trimester there. After her cousin's baby John the Baptist was born, Mary went back home to face her fears. 

Rejected 

When she got home, her fiancé Joseph decided to break up with her. Her pregnancy was obvious by then. He probably felt betrayed since she had been gone for three months and came home with a baby on the way. Because he was a good guy, he decided to split with her in a private, non-condemning way. Still, that initial rejection had to sting.

Shamed

After Gabriel visited Joseph to assure him that the baby was indeed the Messiah and that Mary had actually been telling the truth, Joseph married her. The marriage did not take away the shame that she felt from her family and community. Pregnancy outside of marriage was simply unacceptable then. Mary and Joseph bore this shame together after they were married with the community assuming the baby was his. 

Poor 

She and Joseph had to make their way to a suburb of Jerusalem for the privilege of paying a tax. Because they were poor, they probably walked, and since she was full-term, that took a long time. Once they finally got to Bethlehem, the rooms were already booked. One hotel manager finally took pity on them, probably wanting to avoid her having that baby on his front step. He let them stay in his barn like animals.

Dirty 

She was not at home with a midwife or her sisters or her mother when she delivered. No, she was in a barn. Barns are smelly, dirty places with animals, manure, and mud. Joseph did his best to make her and the baby comfortable placing the baby Jesus in the feeding trough after having wrapped the little one in the blankets that they had brought with them. The filth that comes with childbirth had to have been hard to clean in a barn.

Exposed 

At the most vulnerable moment of her young life, a group of staring shepherds showed up with their sheep to see her baby. They were super nice, but they did not seem to appreciate the concept of privacy. They made a really big deal out of her baby there in the barn, and they did not keep it to themselves. They went all over the whole town telling everybody about her business.  

Displaced 

After she and Joseph had moved into a house in Bethlehem instead of going home, they had a visit from some strangely dressed foreigners. These sages were very kind to their little family and brought expensive gifts for Jesus. They even told her that the priests and the king himself wanted to bring presents to Jesus, too. The next morning, though, they changed their story. In a dream, an angel had told them to avoid the king and to go home another way. That night the angel visited Joseph as well. His message was that evil King Herod and his cronies were going to kill Jesus because Herod thought that her baby was going to try to take his place. Joseph followed the angel’s instructions fleeing their house that very night to seek refuge in Egypt. 


Mary had to feel other things, too, as Jesus got older. She felt angry when He stayed at the temple instead of following her and Joseph home. She might have felt betrayed when Jesus turned her away because He was ministering to people. She must have felt tormented when she saw Him tortured to death. Surely she was hopeless when she buried her son. No mother should have to bury their child, right?


Was Mary special? Yes. Absolutely. Did she always feel special? Doubtful.


Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Mary had some ability to deal with the stuff life threw at her better than the rest of us, but I don’t think so. She was human after all. Here’s my take-away. I don’t always feel special either. I have felt scared, rejected, shamed, poor, dirty, exposed, displaced, angry, betrayed, tormented, hopeless. Maybe you have, too. 


Do you feel special during those times? Nope. But are you special? Yes. Yes, you are. 


You see, that baby, the Messiah, the Savior said that we are special. We are so special to Him that He sacrificed Himself for us. He loved us to death. Then He came back to life, thankfully. To Jesus, to the King of the world, we are very special.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16

Patrick and Vicki Weimer, in Iceland since 1999