photo by Collyn Ware
A wounded deer leaps the highest. –Emily Dickinson
Barren. What a wound this word inflicts! Though I’ve been blessed to mother four children, I will always bear the scars of infertility. Like Elizabeth–a Levite, wife of Zacharias, a priest–I have known the longing of a barren woman. But unlike Elizabeth, my longing was relatively short-lived, for 19 months after adopting my daughter, Megan, I became pregnant with my daugher, Collyn, followed 15 months later, with my daughter, Marinne. Elizabeth’s longing for a child spanned decades; she became an old woman whose barrenness followed her well beyond child-bearing age.
Every time I look at this photo, I’m struck with the utter abandon with which this young woman throws herself into the air, her head and arms thrown back, defying gravity. This is, indeed, a big leap. Yet, aren’t all big leaps made with such abandon, often with the pain of one who’s been wounded and casts her longing away in hopes that it will find favor with God, the holy One who can breathe life into it?
In Luke 1: 6, we read that Elizabeth and her husband, Zachariah, were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. Bad things happen to good people. Suffering comes to the righteous and blameless. Early in my infertility, I was desperate to find a logical explanation for my condition. For months, I believed that I was quite possibly being punished, and the conditions of my punishment were barrenness. Infertility is a lonely business, for even today, a stigma surrounds it. Infertile women often don’t share their pain, believing their condition to be shameful, a mark of their inadequacy, a consequence of their sinfulness. Elizabeth’s story gloriously testifies to the foolishness of such thinking and to the blessing of God’s timing. For God sent the angel Gabriel to Zachariah to announce that Elizabeth would finally bear a child even though she was well beyond child-bearing age. After years of patiently, faithfully waiting, Elizabeth would bear a son, John the Baptist, the prophet who would proclaim Jesus as the promised Messiah.
When a pregnant Mary comes to visit her, Elizabeth welcomes her cousin in spite of the shame of Mary’s supposed “illegitimate” child. As she opens her arms to embrace Mary, her own baby leaps inside her womb, and she is immediately filled with the Holy Spirit. In Luke 1: 42-45 we read of Elizabeth’s great joy as she greets Mary:
In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”
Elizabeth’s story is often understandably overshadowed by Mary’s. She may have been a wounded deer for most of her life, suffering the stigma and hopelessness of being unable to bear a child, but she, like her cousin Mary, makes a great leap into the arms of hope. And the fruits of this leap come miraculously in both her own child, John, and her Savior, Jesus. Elizabeth proclaims that she is favored, for the mother of her Lord stands in her presence.
I suppose that one might make the argument that, for most of us, greeting each day requires a big leap into hope. Hope that we might find favor with God, that our longing might be fulfilled, that our deepest desires might be met. Hope that we might literally make it through another day, that we might put one foot in front of the other and plow through whatever circumstances befall us. Hope that the world might become a kinder, gentler place, restored with beauty and grace. Hope that the Holy Spirit might inhabit us, too, filling our hearts with peace and assurance. Yes, one might make the argument that living requires magnificent leaps into the hope necessary to sustain us.
And one might argue that the wounded often leap the highest, that they offer themselves wholly, feeling as though they have little to lose, for hope is their last resort. I think if Elizabeth were here to counsel us, though, she’d say that hope is our first, best resort. She’d remind us that when we leap with abandon into the arms of God, this is a life-giving leap. Although our lives are filled with seasons of big leaps, Advent, especially, beckons us to make a big leap from the darkness into the light, from the pain of our wounds into grace.
