Saying Yes, Even When the Journey Surprises You

So here we are again, finding ourselves in December way before it’s supposed to be December, am I right? This year I write to you from a pretty different place, figuratively and literally. Back in May, my daughter and I set off for a two-week trip to Zambia, hoping to finalize her adoption and, of course, work with TKP. Thirty-one weeks later, I sit here in a coffee shop in Lusaka, staring at a chaotically (to say the least) decorated Christmas tree, stunned again this morning that we are still here. To be honest, I almost didn’t write anything this year because I didn’t really know what I’d even say. But my thoughts kept circulating around something these last few weeks, so I thought I’d give it a go.

As it happens in most Decembers, my mind keeps going to Mary. As I’ve mentioned before, Mary—an unmarried teenage girl with an unplanned pregnancy—is a character in the Christmas narrative who is often thought about around here. But this year, I keep thinking about her in a different way than I have before.

I keep thinking about her and her calling.

Most of us know that scene well when she got the initial call. The angel appears in her living room, and she’s understandably terrified. He delivers the message that God is calling her to bring His Son, the Savior of mankind, into the world. I think she knew off the bat that this was not an easy calling. Being young and unmarried, and considering her cultural context and all that came with it, I think she was fully aware that saying yes to this calling would mean immediate and intense hardship. But this young girl, with probably some mix of grit and faith, said yes.

Cut to the nativity scene. I think most of us picture some version of the figurines on our mantel. Mary sitting (somehow post-birth) on her knees, looking peacefully and adoringly at her baby lying in the manger, while she was surely thinking that the labor of her calling, figuratively and literally, was finally realized, and she was probably about to enter into her sainthood era.

But for some reason, this year I’m picturing something different, a different vantage point of Mary. I’m envisioning Mary lying there in the middle of the night in that cave/barn, Joseph, surely sawing logs next to her on the hay; the random, unkempt, and foul-smelling strangers—aka the shepherds—still standing there with an assortment of animals staring at her and her baby, and maybe a little boy playing an ill-timed cadence on his drum off in the corner.

I’m imagining her slowly side-eyeing her surroundings and thinking, “Wait…what? You’ve got to be joking with me. Where are we, and what. is. happening? I knew this calling was going to be hard, but it wasn’t supposed to be this kind of hard…it wasn’t supposed to look like this.”

Now, of course, she was surely in awe of the miracles she had seen that night and had quite literally been instrumental in bringing about. What a euphoric rush she must have felt, being witness to what ended up being only glimpses of the divine plan to come.

But also, I wonder if she was, at the same time, oscillating somewhere between surprise and panic—that this was not how she pictured this moment. Her yes to the calling was not supposed to be like this.

During the next 30 or so years of being Jesus’ mom, how often did she have similar experiences and thoughts to that night? Remember when she and Joe lost pre-teen Jesus for a few days? When they found him three days later, she was less than pleased. She was confused and hurt, probably just as much with Jesus as with His Heavenly Father, maybe thinking, “Um, once again, God, what in the world—I did not see things being like this when I signed on to this calling.”

Fast forward to that wedding—the one where Jesus performed His first miracle, turning water into wine at His mother’s request. I picture her eyes widening at that first cup of newly created wine, catching another glimpse of the miraculous master plan and probably experiencing a flood of relief as she saw God’s providence in action, thinking, “Ok, yes—right, this is what the calling was about.”

And then there were those thousands of days in between that aren’t given much ink in Scripture—days surely marked by the unglamorous exhaustion of motherhood but speckled with insane miracle moments that recharged her and reminded her she was raising the actual Messiah.

Much of what we know about Mary’s calling culminates with that first Easter weekend. As she watched her baby take His last breath on that cross, what a crescendo of devastating confusion she must have experienced about the calling she had agreed to a few decades prior. The weekend that followed must have been the darkest chasm between what she had envisioned the journey to be and what it seemed to be becoming.

I want to write now that in yet another three-day period, she once again found her Son—but this time, she was not just pleased but overjoyed at holding Him alive. Her mother-self was overwhelmed with joy and relief at seeing her Son resurrected, and her faithful servant-self was overwhelmed with joy and relief at seeing her calling fully realized. But we don’t know for sure if Jesus appeared to His mother specifically after the resurrection. Maybe after the darkest three days of her earthly journey, she got to behold the fullness of God’s glory and the task He called her to. Or maybe it was another few thousand days later when she took her last breath here and opened her eyes, beholding Him in glory.

I get a lump in my throat contemplating the possibility of it being the latter. Not just from sadness for Mary, the fellow human being, having to endure that hardship, but selfishly for myself. This perspective of Mary’s journey—a pendulum of frequent and sometimes extended hard moments not looking how she pictured when she accepted God’s call—resonates all too strongly.

When Elizabeth and I said yes to starting TKP, we knew it was going to be hard—like, really, really hard. In the six years since, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve experienced unique hardships we never would’ve imagined, and at the same time, gotten to witness and be part of stunning miracle-glimpses of God’s providence. And this year has been no different. The countless nights I’ve rocked a homesick 4-year-old while trying to hold back my own homesick and heartsick tears, or the several times we’ve had to figure out how to save a freezer full of the TKP House’s month’s supply of meat as we entered yet another day of no electricity, I’ve had the thought, “God, this is not the kind of hard I thought it would be when I said yes. I didn’t think it would be like this.”

But also, a couple of weeks ago—as I asked all our kids and staff to put down their pizza and gather together for a picture of our first night in our newly built house on our new property, a mountaintop moment we weren’t sure would actually happen, my head and heart surged with a renewed faith that God is in this journey, in this calling.

So I don’t know where this note finds you this December. Maybe you are riding high, crushing the challenges of life and the holiday season with ease and victory. If so, I truly celebrate that with and for you. Or maybe you’re in a similar place to me this year, finding yourself somewhere in that middle—where you said yes to something, maybe even something you know God called you to, and the shoreline of that yes is far behind you, but the arrival of your journey’s end is not yet in view. Either way, I just want to remind you what God is reminding me this season: that the hope of Christmas is because of The Emmanuel, the reality of “God with us.”

The God with us in the calling that isn’t looking like we thought it would.

The God with us when we stand in awe at getting to witness His sovereignty and personal love for us in small and sometimes huge ways.

And the God with us in every. single. second in between.

Thank you for any and all the ways you have journeyed with TKP this year. We are so, so grateful. God continues to be with us, and we anticipate with excitement and faith what miracles are to come in 2025.