By Cathy Hird

When a couple is trying to have a child, a positive pregnancy test sparks excitement. For a single woman, a missed period can bring panic. She tells herself to be patient, that sometimes she is late, but if the weeks stretch out or morning sickness comes, she knows. Tough choices face her. She begins to imagine what the baby's father will do, what her parents will say, what her friends will think.

Luke's story of Christmas begins like this. In a strict society where righteousness and honour are prized, an unmarried woman is told that her child has been chosen to carry God's message and God's power. Over time, she comes to see that if a poor and single country girl will bear this prophet, God is lifting up the poor and humbling the powerful. Although Mary accepted this calling, she would have faced a difficult time. Let me imagine what her mother might have thought as the night of the birth approached:

"When Mary asked if she could go visit her cousin Elizabeth, I was pleased. My daughter can be such a dreamer, and Elizabeth is as down to earth as you get. She's had to keep grounded given she is barren. Was barren I should say. Six months ago, in her forties, she bore a son. A miracle.

Mary spend three months with Elizabeth. As soon as she came home, she told me her news. She was pregnant, had been before she went for the visit!

I was furious. I tore strips off her, I can tell you. But she did not react to my anger, just stood there, hands folded, telling me that there was more to the story if I would just sit down and listen. Instead I demanded she explain what we were supposed to do.

Her fiancé Joseph's family is righteous. They would not allow the marriage to happen if Mary was already with child. Such an embarrassment to us all. I could just hear my sisters complaining. And my sister-in-law, she would be the worst. She would argue that I had diminished the status of the whole family. How could my quiet dreamer have let this happen?

Eventually, when I ran out of words, Mary told me the rest of the story. In her quiet certain way, she spoke of an angel, a messenger from God who told her that the child would be a son of God in the tradition of Isaiah and Micah, a prophet in our family. I got angry again, accused her of foolish dreams.

"If Elizabeth can bear a child when she is old, why is this impossible?" she asked. "God is doing a new thing, shifting the balance."

I sent her to rest after her long walk home. When she got up, I put her to work in the garden. I needed time alone. I needed time to think.

That night, I tossed and turned. If Mary had not gone to Elizabeth for three whole months, we might have hurried up the marriage and covered this up. But it was too late for that. Eventually I slept. In a dream, I saw a pathway in the wilderness, and I followed it. I climbed into the hills, to a high place where I could see the land spread out, and in the distance, Jerusalem. A voice whispered, "Trust me."

In the morning, I told my husband about my dream and that Mary was expecting. I told him about the angel. He did not get angry at all. You never know how a man is going to react. He said we would manage. He went to Joseph that very day, and he was angry. He would do it quietly, but he would end the engagement.

Dreams are the thing these days, because an angel came to Joseph in a dream, and this messenger assured him that the child was holy, God's child, a prophet child. He married our dreamer as soon as it could be arranged.

The child will be born soon. Out of my reach. Because of one of those foolish orders from the emperor, Joseph and Mary have travelled to Bethlehem. I pray that they find a safe place and good help for the birthing. Labour is not only painful, but chancy.

There is nothing I can do but trust, as my dream said. I pray that God will watch over my little dreamer, and the child. I tell myself that Mary is right: if she and Elizabeth can bear sons in this way, anything can happen."

Cathy Hird is a farmer, minister and writer living near Walters Falls.