Who is perfect?

"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God" Ephesians 2:8

As we approach the last Sunday in Ordinary time, our thoughts are turned toward Advent, preparation for Christmas, the coming of the Infant God.

My mind often turns to Our Blessed Mother at this time, as I have such devotion to her, but especially as a mother, I can feel I can relate to her at this time. Mary was heavy with pregnancy at this time, as we approach this last month before Christmas, and most of us mothers knows how that feels. How we ache, physically all of the time, and how we ache to feel that precious body in our arms. We have felt those feet, those hands, that head butting tender parts, with the wall of the uterus and our flesh between the world and that little person, but we have felt them. We ache to know them and see them.

There is not a mother alive, I don't believe, who has not worried with pregnancy, "Will he be normal?" "Will she be healthy?"

Did Mary wonder, I wonder? I am certain she did. She was foretold that she would give birth to the Son of God, and in many ways I am sure she knew He would be perfect, as only God can be, but did she wonder, "Will He be perfect in the ways of the world?" "What will He look like, will He be healthy?" She was a human mother, so I am certain she worried, as it is so human to worry.

Which brings me to this topic, "Who is perfect?"

This is not a spiritual post, per se (or series as it must be since I can only sit for short periods at the computer with my imperfect body -- back pain), but my thoughts, mostly about a book I started recently (and shortly after closed never to open again) and some personal reflection, about love of life, perfect, or not.

I start this post/series with a short, sad story.

When I was a very young mother, with one little baby boy, whom I thought was perfect (because in my eyes he was), we had a next door neighbor who was pregnant with her second child. I had never had pro-life conversations with her, we weren't terribly close, but I learned a lot about her views on life, and her expectations, by her actions.

In her sixth month, at 26 weeks to be exact, she was in a automobile accident in which the car was hit from the rear, and she was sitting in the back seat with just a lap belt , her waters ruptured, and though she was technically uninjured, she was hospitalized to keep an eye on the baby. A day or two after the accident, she showed signs of infection and her labor was induced. When her baby was born, a little girl, she and her husband made the decision to use "no heroic methods" to save her life. Granted, this was in 1990 and the threshold of viability was later than it is now, but the couple was told by doctors that she might develop cerebral palsy, or other complications as a result of her prematurity, even though she would have a good chance to live. The decision the couple made to "not use heroic measures," to withhold food and oxygen, was made, in her words, "Because their baby might not be perfect."

to be continued...