And how does this happen to me...?

Of course, it is a good place to go to when meditating on the Visitation....to recognize how two women can come together and call out each other's gifts. How two women can actually be happy for one another, free from jealousy and competition. How two women can be so focused on God and His incredibly unique and perfect plan for each individual, that speaking truth and life into each other's heart is impossible to not do, for the outpouring of the immense power of the Holy Spirit is something we can not possibly contain. It fills, then spills, causing babies in utero to leap, bringing hidden blessings into sharp focus.

But one dark and early morning in prayer, while meditating on this mystery, a new reality leaped within my own womb, filling my heart and soul, and spilling out of my eyes. For in the long suffering years that I have been praying for my own son to be saved, begging Mary to do as she did in Cana, and to please let her son Jesus know that it was time he do something, it had never occurred to me; that I had the nerve to approach this Woman, whose heart I pierced and Son I crucified, and insist that this baby of her own, save mine.

The humility, pure love, and super natural gratefulness of Mary and Elizabeth, are some pretty serious friendship goals. Goals for our own female friendships. Goals for our friendship with Mary. And goals for our relationship with Jesus. I weep as I imagine these two courageous and faith filled women; pregnant together, side by side, carrying their miracle babies, certain of God's good plan, and handing their own lives over, despite the necessary swords that were guaranteed to pierce their hearts. For these babies they rejoiced over? These blessings from God? One would be be-headed, and the other crucified. And as I allow my mind to wander and pull me into their story, I can't help but think, how good God is to give them each other. How gracious He was to give them a friend of faith to travel with; a sister in Christ to run in haste to, to greet, to bless, to ultimately qualify in saying, "I get it. Me too. You are not alone."

And as I pray this morning in gratitude for all of the Mary's and Elizabeth's God has sent me in haste, all the Sisters in Christ who with pierced hearts of their own, tenderly and selflessly tend to my own wound, and as I continue to get up and arise, praying through Mary to the heart of Jesus, earnestly and unceasingly for my own, I am shocked by the words, that no matter how many times I set my eyes on them, echo in the deepest most sorrowful crevices of my very being:

"And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"