What Did Mary Really Know?

We were all snuggled up listening to some Christmas songs on YouTube the other night and Pentatonix’s version of Mary Did You Know came up.  A little bit later Monkey said she wondered how much Mary really did know. It got me thinking and the song has been stuck on replay in my head since.

We know for sure that she knew that by some divine miracle she was going to be the mother of the Son of God. We also know that she must have known her heritage and known that He would also be of her royal bloodline with the right to literally be King of the Jews. Guesses would say that especially as Christ was born and grew and the miracles and testimonies of His divinity continued to multiply she probably felt at various times awe, confusion, excitement, and worry and all range of motherly emotions.  Somedays she likely looked at him as just her child much like any other, sometimes the scriptures tell us there were at least hints of a grand (though probably not completely understood) future yet to come, and other times there was surely overwhelming testimony that she was responsible for mothering the Savior of the World although what that meant exactly was also probably still a bit hazy.

Now I won’t get into all of the deep down questions that could be asked or thought about that, I think there are really lots of interesting questions to ponder in regards to this but I wondered what I could learn from her.

Then it hit me.

I am a modern Mary.

Just hear me out for a minute. We believe that we are all children of God. Not in the same way that Christ was of course, but we each have some of God the Father’s divine nature within us. He is still the Father of our Spirits even if He isn’t the Father of our flesh. He cares about each of us more than we can know and wants us to be like Him.

As such every mother to an extent is just like Mary. We are all given precious little gifts from Heaven that He has entrusted to our care. We, like her, probably have times when understanding who they really are or recognizing their full potential seems hard to grasp. Most of the time we likely look at them with eyes of expected routine and normalcy. Sometimes we get glimpses of their greatness. If we’re lucky every once in a rare while we pause and remember that these are His children with an inner divine power beyond our comprehension.

Most of the time no matter where we are in our thoughts we’re just hoping we don’t mess them up. Here too we can look to Mary. She, like us, was completely human. I’m sure she made mistakes - probably lots of them. Still if we looked to what the scriptures teach us about how she handled it we see that she cherished the moments that came, remained faithful, and kept learning from and loving Christ throughout His life, even as she watched His final minutes of mortality.

We can do the same. We can keep making the most of each moment we have. We can learn from our children and share with them all that we can. Most importantly we can keep loving them through all their ups and downs tests and trials and give them reassurance that come what may we will always by their side to the very best of our abilities.

I’m not sure everything Mary knew or understood but I am thankful for what I can know because of her.