What It's All About

On Christmas Day six years ago we were snowed in and expecting our twelfth child. Labor had begun in the early morning by the time I realized that it was snowing again and I worried whether or not everything would be OK. Since it was Christmas Day I couldn't help thinking of another woman a long time ago who had a baby under less than optimal conditions.

Our family had experienced several setbacks during that year and we were struggling to make ends meet, find a better job, keep our home and raise our large family. But we knew that this little baby was special and we rejoiced in the knowledge that he was coming. We knew he was a boy and when it came time to discuss the names for the baby I had a dream in which my husband told me the baby's name. When I awoke, I felt that it wouldn't be fair for me to just say, “Hey, I had a dream and his name is going to be ____.” I thought it would be better if he came up with the name and it just happened to match the one he told me in my dream. So I waited... and waited... and waited. Finally one day in October, two of our children came bounding into the room where my husband and I were sitting. With grinning faces and much enthusiasm they announced that they knew what the baby's name should be.

I looked at my husband and he looked at me. This had never happened before so we didn't quite know what to expect. I asked them to tell me what they thought the name should be and they assured me with all the confidence of youth that the baby's name HAD to be John. I didn't know what to say to them, so I looked at my husband again. He, of course, was unruffled as usual and made no immediate response. I on the other hand was speechless. When I did not respond right away to the announcement, the children became worried and upset. The younger one began to cry and say that the name just HAD to be John. I asked them how they knew. They explained a neat little process whereby they had been saying all of the current names in the family and 'testing' new names at the end of them to determine which sounded best. But they were as confident as any judge that their deductions were correct.

At this point I was having trouble keeping my composure and deciding what to do, so I left the room. I walked into the kitchen for a drink of water and as I looked over the sink to where my daily calendar sits I read again the short verse written thereon. My heart went to my throat and I took a second look. There on the calendar were the same words I had read in the baby book that very day when I looked up the meaning of the name which my husband had told me in the dream. I was astonished to say the least. When I went back into the room, I showed the calendar to my husband. All he said was, “I know.” The name he told me in the dream... John.

It was only later, as I sat on my bed on that cold, snowy Christmas Day, that I realized the significance of what had happened with John's name. Suddenly, all those stories about Christmas where people are told names by angels, people have dreams warning them of trouble ahead, people are in trouble because they are having a baby, and a woman has to bear her child alone in a stable, came alive for me and I no longer felt alone and worried. I realized all at once that they were people like us with problems like us. Never before had it all felt so real, so new, so true. It wasn't just a story anymore. They were ordinary people like us with an extraordinary job to do and I loved them for it. The dreams, the wise men, the Angels and everything, were evidence of a Father's love for them. I felt loved too.

John came at 9:00 on Christmas night. We were able to get a midwife through all the snow, just in time. It wasn't a stable, and the only shepherds that came were the other children who still had their robe-costumes on from our family Christmas pageant, but the stars seemed brighter when we heard the cry of a real newborn babe on Christmas Night. Two thousand years ago they still had taxes to pay, enemies to forgive, hardships to overcome and burdens to bear, and two thousand years later it's still all about love.