When my husband I got married, we moved into a new apartment and signed a cable agreement, the kind where you get a bundle with far more than you need because getting less actually costs more. As a result, we’ve been watching far more television than normal—case in point, while eating lunch the other day, I started watching a show called “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” which showcases women who show no signs of pregnancy but then birth a baby. The episode I watched showed a fit, thirty-something Miss who got violently sick while traveling on a boat with her significant other. Shortly after returning to the marina, she out popped a baby girl.

She had gained no weight.

She had never had any of the symptoms of pregnancy—no nausea, no swelling, no discomfort.

Even the EMTs thought she had something like a prolapsed uterus, not a baby agitating her belly.

When they interviewed the woman and her partner, you could just see the shock on their faces: He could not believe he was a father. She couldn’t believe she was a mom. “Usually you have nine months to prepare to have a baby, and to just have it dropped in your lap…It took a little bit of time to get the shock to wear off,” she said. “I called my daughters and I said, ‘You know how when Matt and I sometimes go away we bring you back some souvenirs, like shells or something? Well, this time we brought you back a little something different.’”

It’s easy to imagine how shocked they would be after such a miraculous experience: they thought they were going away for a couple of days…then they came back with a child. It’s just not how people usually become parents. It’s crazy, wild, maybe even a little wonderful.

Being four days before Christmas Eve, hearing this saga made me think of the parents of my faith: Mary and Joseph. I can only guess that they must have felt a bit like this contemporary boating couple when they found out they would be parents. It’s not really the traditional way of doing things, to become pregnant with some help from the Holy Spirit or to be the man whose conjugal responsibilities were displaced by God—before even being married!

But both Mary and Joseph rose to the occasion. The Gospel of Matthew says that Joseph, who had the option to leave Mary in favor of a different, non-pregnant woman, chose to stay by her side, to raise this miraculous child. Mary, for her part, agreed to the challenge of being an unmarried, pregnant woman in a time when such a state could have led to the end of her relationship or abandonment by her community.

It’s easy to think that the story of Mary and Joseph is hard to identify with, and yet, there are still couples today who come to parenthood in miraculous ways. Some adopt, some care for foster children, some use a variety of assisted reproductive technologies, some plan to have a child, and some do not. A few, even, birth children they didn’t know they were carrying.

Yet even if parenthood is a foreign concept, the idea that assumptions can be derailed and that life can throw a curve ball is not. We all in one way or another experience the kind of derailment this story describes. As the famous adage goes, “Life is what happens when we’re making other plans.”

Mary and Joseph handled that derailment with enormous grace and courage, and by so doing, they became parents to a child who changed the world.

For those who celebrate Christmas—and for those who don’t—it is important to remember that this holiday is not, in the end, about cutting edge toys or buttery cookies. It’s about taking good faith risks, risks that don’t always seem reasonable, plausible, or normal: to believe when faith is low, to accept a challenge that seems unattainable, maybe, even, to become a parent.

At the conclusion of “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” this new family huddled together around their surprise baby. The mother, still with a surprised look on her face, said, “I think the best part of the whole situation is how we all came together.”

*Content is based on my recent sermon preached at Christ Church, Quincy, MA, on December 19, 2010.