Who's Your Elizabeth

Context

Mary is maybe fourteen. An angel just told her she'd carry the Son of God, and she said yes. Then the angel left, and she was alone in her family's house in Nazareth — a town where everybody knows everything — holding a secret no one would believe.

She needed to tell someone. The one person whose life had also been interrupted by something impossible was her older cousin Elizabeth, pregnant after a lifetime of barren, days away in the hill country.

Story

So Mary packs a bag and walks days through the hills, alone, carrying news that could get her quietly divorced or loudly stoned. Nobody knows yet. Not even, visibly, her own body.

She pushes open the door and calls out hello. Before she can say a single word, Elizabeth's own baby kicks hard inside her — John, six months along, doing the prenatal version of I see you.

"Why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord would come to me?"

Mary hasn't told her anything. And that's when she finally lets the words out — the song we now call the Magnificat — half praise, half I-can't-believe-this-is-real, fully the sound of a girl who has finally been believed. She stays three months.

What We Learn

The angel told Mary what was happening. The angel didn't tell her she'd be believed. That part she had to go find.

She didn't make the trip for advice. She made it so she wouldn't be the only person on earth holding what she was holding.

Who's your Elizabeth.