God's Glory in the Unexpected: What Mary's Messy Birth Teaches Us
Hey there, mama! Have you ever worried that if your birth doesn't go according to plan, somehow God won't be glorified in it? Or that experiencing His goodness requires everything to unfold just the way you've imagined? Today, I want to share something the Holy Spirit pressed on my heart during a recent church service—a perspective on Mary's birth story that completely transformed how I view unexpected birth circumstances. Because friend, what if I told you that the most world-changing birth in history looked nothing like what anyone would have planned?
🎧 Listen to the Episode
When God's Birth Plan Looks Nothing Like Ours
I was sitting in church a few Sundays ago, listening to the familiar Christmas story being read, when suddenly the Holy Spirit impressed something profound on my heart: Mary's birth story was messy. It was chaotic, uncomfortable, and absolutely nothing like what any mother would have chosen. And yet—this is the beautiful part—God was glorified in every single unexpected moment.
As I sat there, I thought about you. I thought about all the Christian mamas I work with who carry this heavy fear that if their birth takes an unexpected turn, they'll somehow miss out on experiencing God's goodness. That a "good birth"—one that honors God—has to look a certain way.
But mama, let's walk through Mary's story together, not as the sanitized Christmas narrative we're used to, but as a real birth story with all its raw, vulnerable, unexpected moments.
The Shocking Announcement
Mary's birth journey began with news that would completely disrupt her life. When the angel Gabriel appeared to tell her she would conceive the Son of God, we often romanticize this moment because we know how the story ends. But put yourself in her shoes—she was young, unmarried, and being told she would become pregnant. This wasn't just unexpected; it was scandalous.
Yet Mary said yes. Not because the circumstances were comfortable, but because she trusted God.
A Relationship Under Strain
Even after her brave "yes," things didn't suddenly become easy. Joseph, her betrothed, initially planned to divorce her quietly when he discovered she was pregnant. Can you imagine? The man who was supposed to be your partner, your support through this journey, preparing to walk away. It took an angel appearing in Joseph's dream to convince him to stay.
And even then, there were whispers. Judgmental looks. People in Nazareth doing the math and drawing their own conclusions. Mary carried not just a baby, but the weight of misunderstanding and judgment throughout her pregnancy.
The Impossible Journey
Then, right around her due date, Caesar Augustus issued a decree for a census. Everyone had to return to their ancestral home. For Mary and Joseph, that meant a 70-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem—while she was fully pregnant.
Seventy miles. On a donkey. In your ninth month.
I can barely handle a trip to the grocery store in my third trimester, let alone a journey that would have taken days. The physical discomfort, the exhaustion, the anxiety of being so far from home and any support system when labor could start at any moment—I'm certain this wasn't in Mary's birth plan.
No Room for the King
When they finally arrived in Bethlehem, exhausted and likely already experiencing early labor signs, there was no room for them. No private space. No comfortable bed. No midwife waiting. Scripture tells us they ended up in a stable—a place for animals.
The smells. The lack of privacy. The cold, hard ground. This wasn't a peaceful, prepared birth space. This wasn't fit for any mother, let alone the mother of the Messiah.
An Unlikely Birth Partner
And who attended Mary during labor? Just Joseph. Not her mother. Not experienced midwives. Not other women who had walked this path before. Just her husband, both of them trying to make the best of circumstances neither could have predicted.
When Jesus was born—the Savior of the world, the long-awaited Messiah—he was laid in a manger. A feeding trough for animals. Wrapped in strips of cloth because that's all they had.
Unexpected Visitors
The first people to hear about Jesus' birth weren't dignitaries or religious leaders. They were shepherds—the lowliest members of society, out in the fields when angels appeared with the incredible news. These rough, probably smelly shepherds were the first witnesses to the newborn King.
Picture Mary in those raw postpartum moments—exhausted, overwhelmed, holding her precious newborn—when suddenly strangers arrive to see him. But this wasn't random. This was God's plan.
📖 Scripture for Your Heart
"Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her." - Luke 1:45
This verse pierces my heart every time I read it. When Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth after receiving the news of her pregnancy, Elizabeth didn't say, "Blessed is she who has everything figured out" or "Blessed is she whose birth goes perfectly."
No. She said, "Blessed is she who has believed."
The blessing isn't in the ease of the journey. The blessing is in the believing. The blessing is in trusting that God will fulfill His promises through you, no matter what path that takes.
Three Powerful Lessons from Mary's Messy Birth
1. God's Goodness Isn't Dependent on Comfortable Circumstances
Mary's birth was hard. Vulnerable. Nothing like what any mother would choose. But God's presence was there. His purposes were being fulfilled. His glory was on full display.
When your birth takes an unexpected turn—when you need interventions you didn't plan for, when complications arise, when your support system falls through—God's goodness is not absent. Often, it's in those very moments we experience Him most tangibly.
2. God's Glory Doesn't Require Our Perfect Plans
Think about this: God could have orchestrated a palace birth for Jesus. He could have ensured Mary had the finest midwives, the most comfortable setting, perfect timing. But He didn't.
Why? Because His glory shines brightest not through our perfect plans, but through our trust in His perfect purposes. Your birth doesn't have to look a certain way for God to be glorified. He is glorified when you trust Him. When you surrender your plans to His purposes. When you experience His peace in circumstances that don't make sense.
3. The Unexpected Can Become Sacred Ground
Mary didn't just endure these circumstances—she experienced God through them. What if the moments in your birth that don't go according to plan become the very moments where you encounter God most deeply? What if the vulnerability, the surrender, the complete dependence on Him opens your heart to experience His goodness in ways comfort never could?
The Command That Changes Everything
Throughout Mary's story, one phrase keeps appearing: "Do not fear."
The angel said it to Mary when announcing she would conceive
The angel said it to Joseph in his dream
The angel said it to the shepherds announcing Jesus' birth
Did you know "do not fear" appears over 365 times in Scripture? It's one of the most repeated commands in the Bible. That's not a coincidence, mama.
God knows fear is our natural response to the unknown, to circumstances beyond our control. But "do not fear" isn't just about calming anxiety. It's an invitation to trust. It's God saying:
"I know this doesn't look like what you expected. I know this is hard. I know you're scared. But trust me. My plans are good. My purposes will prevail. I am with you."
🙏 A Prayer for Your Journey
Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for coming into this world the way you did—humbly, unexpectedly, showing us that your glory shines brightest when we trust you in the unexpected. Lord, I pray for this mama reading these words right now. Fill her with your peace about her birth. Help her to believe, like Mary did, that you will fulfill your purposes through her, whether her birth goes according to plan or takes completely unexpected turns. Remind her that you are with her and your goodness is present in every single moment. Replace any fears she's carrying with trust in your faithfulness. Blessed is she who believes that you will fulfill your promises to her. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Emmanuel: God With Us
As we approach Christmas and you prepare for your own birth, remember this: The same God who was with Mary in that stable, who orchestrated every detail of Jesus' birth for His glory, is the same God who is with you.
He sees you. He knows your fears. He knows your hopes and dreams and carefully crafted birth plans. But He's inviting you to trust Him—not because He promises everything will go according to your plan, but because He promises His plans are good and He will be with you every step of the way.
That's what Emmanuel means: God with us. In the messy. In the unexpected. In the moments that look nothing like we imagined. His glory shines through it all.
📎Resources & Links Mentioned
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✝️ Online Christian Childbirth Education - Explore my complete birth preparation self-paced course
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Meet Your Host —
Natalie is a certified birth doula and childbirth educator in Jacksonville, FL. She's trained through DONA International, certified as a Body Ready Method Pro, and an advanced VBAC doula. Through Faith Over Fear Birth, she equips Christian women to experience peaceful, faith-filled births through both virtual and in-person support.
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📄 Full Episode Transcript
Hey there, mama, and welcome back to Faith Over Fear, the Christian Pregnancy and Birth podcast. I am especially excited to share today's episode with you. Today's message actually came to me in a pretty unexpected way. I was sitting in church a few Sundays ago, listening to the Christmas story being read, and suddenly I felt this overwhelming sense of the Holy Spirit just impressing something on my heart. And it was this: Mary's birth story was messy. It seemed pretty chaotic, and it was nothing like what anyone would have planned, and yet God was glorified in every single moment.
And I thought about you, mama. I thought about the Christian moms I work with who carry this weight, this fear that if their birth doesn't go according to plan, somehow God won't be glorified, or that he's not even in it. That if things take an unexpected turn, they've missed out on experiencing his goodness. That a "good birth," a birth that honors God, has to look a certain way.
But what if I told you that the birth of Jesus that changed everything looked nothing like what anyone would have expected? And that in every uncomfortable, inconvenient, unexpected moment of the Christmas story, God's glory shined brighter than ever? So that's what we're diving into today. I want to talk about how God can absolutely be glorified and his goodness experienced and magnified in ways we never expected, because that's exactly how he chose to enter this world.
So let me ask you something. When you think about your ideal birth, what does it look like? Maybe it's a really peaceful home birth, surrounded by very select loved ones. Or maybe it's a beautiful hospital birth with your epidural in full swing. Maybe it's a planned C-section with your favorite worship music playing. Whatever it is, there's probably a picture in your mind of how you hope it will go, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Having a birth plan, preparing, educating yourself—these are all good and wise things to do.
But here is what I want you to hold onto today: God's goodness and glory are not dependent on your circumstances going according to plan. In fact, some of the most powerful testimonies of God's faithfulness come from the moments that look nothing like what we expected. And we see this truth right at the very beginning in the birth of Jesus.
So let's walk through Mary's story together, but I want you to hear it not just as this familiar Christmas narrative, but as a birth story. Because when you look at it through that lens, you realize just how much didn't go according to any human plan.
It starts with Mary receiving news that would change her life forever. The angel Gabriel appears to her and tells her that she's going to conceive and bear a son, the Son of God. Now, we often romanticize this moment because we know how the story ends, but put yourself in her shoes for a moment. She was very young. She was unmarried, and she was being told that she was going to be pregnant. This wasn't just unexpected; it was shocking. It was scandalous, and it really would have disrupted everything about her life that she knew. And yet Mary says yes, not because the circumstances were comfortable or convenient, but because she trusted God.
But that didn't make everything suddenly easy. Mary's pregnancy created immediate strain in her relationship with Joseph, her betrothed. Scripture tells us that when Joseph found out Mary was pregnant, he planned to quietly divorce her. Can you imagine? The man that you're supposed to marry, the one that's meant to be your partner, he was just preparing to walk away. And it took an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream to convince him to stay.
Even after Joseph chose to believe and stay by her side, there were still whispers. There were, I'm sure, judgmental looks. There were people in Nazareth who did the math and were like, "Wait a minute. What's going on here?" So Mary experienced that weight of judgment during her pregnancy, something that maybe you have experienced too.
Then, right around her due time, there's a decree from Caesar Augustus—a census. Everyone has to return to their ancestral home to be registered. And for Mary and Joseph, that meant they needed to travel about 70 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Seventy miles. And while she was fully pregnant. I don't know about you, but if you've ever been in your last month and you have a lot of errands to run, that feels exhausting. But I cannot even imagine going on a 70-mile journey on a donkey—the physical discomfort, the exhaustion, and the anxiety of being so far from home and a support system when labor could start at any moment. I am sure this was not in Mary's birth plan.
And then they get to Bethlehem, and there's no room. No room for them, no private space, no comfortable bed, no midwife waiting for them. Scripture tells us that there was no room for them in the inn. They ended up in a stable, a place for animals. Can you possibly imagine giving birth in a stable? The smells, the lack of privacy, the cold dirt floor, whatever they had. This was not peaceful. This was not clean. This was not a prepared birth space that would be fit for any mother, let alone the mother of God.
And who was her birth partner? It was just Joseph. Not her mom, not any experienced midwives, not any other women that had gone through this before. It was just her husband, and they were trying to make the best of circumstances neither of them could have possibly predicted.
But then when Jesus is born, the Savior of the world, the Messiah, guess where he's laid? He is laid in a manger, a feeding trough for animals, wrapped in strips of cloth because that's all they had.
And then who were the first visitors? Not dignitaries, not religious leaders, not even loving family members or friends who traveled to support them. The first people to hear about Jesus' birth were shepherds—the lowliest members of society. They were out in the fields watching their flocks when suddenly an angel appeared, and then a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and announcing this incredible news. These rough, probably smelly shepherds came to see the newborn king.
Can you imagine Mary, in the immediate postpartum haze, exhausted from labor, holding her newborn son, and suddenly there are these strangers—shepherds—showing up to see him? But here's the thing. This again was not random. This wasn't God scrambling to make the best of a really weird and awkward situation. This was God's plan. God chose shepherds to be the first witnesses. God chose for Mary to give birth in a humble stable.
And it didn't end there. Later, wise men from the east who had been following a star, they brought gifts fit for a king: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But their visit also brought danger, because King Herod heard about this newborn king of the Jews and felt threatened. So threatened that he ordered the killing of all boys in Bethlehem under the age of two. An angel appeared to Joseph warning him to flee. So Mary and Joseph, with their newborn baby, had to leave in the middle of the night and travel to Egypt. They became refugees, fleeing for their lives, starting their life as a family in a foreign land.
None of this was straightforward. None of this was easy. None of this was comfortable. And yet—this is so important—God was glorified in every single moment. His purposes were being accomplished.
So what does this mean for us? What does Mary's birth teach us about our own births?
First, I think it teaches us that God's goodness is not, again, dependent on our circumstances being comfortable. Mary's birth was hard. It was vulnerable. It was nothing like what any mother would hope for. But God's presence was there. His purposes were being fulfilled, and his glory was fully on display. When your birth takes an unexpected turn, when you need an intervention you didn't plan for, when you end up in a different birth setting than you had hoped for, when your support system falls through or complications arise, God's goodness is not absent. In fact, it's often in those very moments that we experience him most tangibly.
Second, it teaches us that God's glory doesn't require our perfect circumstances. I want you to think about this. God could have orchestrated a palace birth for Jesus. He could have ensured that Mary had the most skilled midwives, the most comfortable setting, perfect timing for the journey. But he didn't. Because his glory shines brightest not through our perfect plans, but through our trust in his perfect plans. Your birth doesn't have to look a certain way for God to be glorified. He is glorified when you trust him in all things. He is glorified when you surrender your plans to his purposes. He's glorified when you experience his peace and his goodness in circumstances that, on the surface, don't really make sense.
And then third, I think it teaches us that the unexpected can become the very place where we encounter God most deeply. Mary didn't just endure these circumstances. She experienced God through them. What if the moments in your birth that don't go according to plan become the very moments where you meet God in a way that you've never had the chance to before? What if the vulnerability, the surrender, the complete dependence on him opens your heart to experience his goodness in ways comfort never could?
Throughout Mary's story, there's a phrase that keeps appearing: "Do not fear." The angel said this to Mary when he announced she would conceive. The angel said it to Joseph when he appeared in the dream. And the angel said it to the shepherds when he announced Jesus' birth. Do not fear.
Did you know that "do not fear" or "fear not" appears over 365 times in Scripture? It's one of the most repeated commands in the entire Bible, and that is certainly not a coincidence. God knows that fear is our natural response to the unknown, to circumstances that we cannot control. But "do not fear" isn't just about calming your anxiety. It's an invitation to trust. It's God saying, "I know this doesn't look like what you expected. I know this is hard. I know you're scared. But trust me. My plans are good. My purposes will prevail. I am with you."
Remember that God is inviting you to trust him, not because he's asking you to deny the difficulty or deny the facts, but because he's promising you his presence and his goodness in the midst of it.
There's a moment in Luke chapter one that I want us to focus on. It's when Mary, after receiving the news that she's going to bear the Messiah, goes and visits her cousin Elizabeth, who is also miraculously pregnant in her old age and is carrying John, who will become John the Baptist. And when Mary arrives, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and she says something so profound. This is Luke 1:45, and it says, "Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her."
Let that sink in for just a moment. Elizabeth doesn't say, "Blessed is she who has everything figured out." She says, "Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her." The blessing isn't in the ease of the journey or the comfort of the journey. The blessing is in the believing, in the faith that's required. The blessing is trusting in the Lord.
Mary was blessed not because her path was easy, but because she trusted that God would fulfill his promises through her, no matter what that path looked like.
And mama, this is so true for you. You are blessed when you believe that God will fulfill his promises through your birth, whatever form that takes. You are blessed when you trust that God's goodness is present even in the unexpected. And you are blessed when you surrender your plans to his sovereignty and say, like Mary, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said."
The blessing is in the believing. God's promises are fulfilled even—and especially—through unexpected paths.
So just as we're a few days away from Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I want to encourage you with this: The same God who was with Mary in that stable, who orchestrated every detail of Jesus' birth for his glory and purposes, is the same exact God who is with you. He sees you. He knows your fears about how this birth will go. He knows your hopes and your desires and your dreams and your plans. But he is inviting you to trust him, not because he promises everything will go according to your plan, but because he promises that his plans are good and he will be with you every step of the way.
That's what his name means. That's what Emmanuel, Jesus's name, means: God with us. His goodness can be experienced and magnified in ways you never imagined, because that's how he chose to enter the world—humbly, unexpectedly, and in circumstances that looked nothing like anyone would have planned or anticipated. But through it all, his glory was shining through and continues to shine through.
Before we close this episode, I want to just pray with you. Whether you're listening to this at the end of your pregnancy, or maybe you've already had your baby and you're reflecting on that birth experience, this prayer is for you.
Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for coming into this world the way you did—humbly, unexpectedly, showing us that your glory shines brightest when we trust you in the unexpected. Lord, I pray for this mama who's listening to my voice right now. I ask that you would fill her with your peace about her birth. Help her to believe, like Mary did, that you will fulfill your purposes through her, whether her birth goes according to plan or takes completely unexpected turns. Remind her that you are with her and your goodness is present in every single moment. I ask, Lord Jesus, that you would replace any fears that she's carrying with trust in your faithfulness. Blessed is she who believes that you will fulfill your promises to her. I ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen.
I hope this episode has encouraged your heart. As we head into this Christmas season, I pray that you feel a renewed sense of hope and trust in the Lord, not just for your birth, but for every area of your life where things maybe have not gone according to plan.
And if you're looking for some more support as you prepare for your birth, I would love to come alongside you. Head over to faithoverfearbirth.com to see all the ways I can support you, whether that's through virtual birth support or my online childbirth education course. I'm here for you, and I believe that with the right preparation, biblical encouragement, and faith-centered support, you can walk into your birth with confidence and peace, knowing that God is with you every step of the way.
Merry Christmas, mama, and I will see you next time.
