Three Days: A Mother's Story Read Online Free Page B

or maybe it was just sympathy for my dear bridegroom, when he finally took me to the sweet little house he had prepared for us right next to his widowed mother’s home.
    He had somehow found the time to create several well-made pieces of furniture for our own use—a low table, a bench and a stool, and a lovely carved trunk. The small space was clean and orderly. But when I saw the bed off in the corner, a sturdy pallet constructed, I knew, by my beloved’s own two hands, I looked at him with troubled eyes. To my relief, he simply laughed.
    “No need to worry, dear Mary,” he said in a reassuring voice. “The angel made it very clear that I am not to take you as my wife until after God’s Son is born. And, have no fear, I am prepared to wait for you.”
    I reached out and hugged him, telling him once again how much I loved him.
    “But know this,” he said as he took my face into his two hands. “I greatly look forward to that day, my love.”
    So it was that we slept together side by side in our wedding bed without having sexual relations. And so it continued for the next six months. I knew that Joseph loved me and even that he desired me in the way a husband desires his wife. But not one time did he pressure me. Not only was Joseph a good man, but he had more integrity than any man I have ever known—even my own father, and I always felt that no one would ever measure up to him.
    But here is what I still find very interesting as I recall those first months of our marriage—during that time of restraint and self-control, my husband and I became very intimate. Not on a physical level, of course. Although, it was amusing how everyone in our families assumed we were physically intimate and even teased us for looking so happy all the time. But we drew very close on a deep emotional level—or perhaps it was spiritual. All I knew was that it was a level of intimacy I had never experienced before. Nor do I expect to experience it again.
    My sweet Joseph. Jehovah knew exactly what he was doing when he chose this dear man to be my husband and Jesus’s earthly father. The Lord God made no mistake in selecting Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth. Sometimes I even wonder if God did not choose Joseph first and then me later. I remember telling Joseph this very thing once, and he laughed so hard. Of course, he told me I had it all backward.
    Even so, I have marveled at how some (those who believe in my son’s deity) have treated me with such awe-filled reverence and respect—and really it was Joseph who wielded the most earthly influence on Jesus’s life. In some ways, I was only the earthen vessel that poured God’s Son into his human life. But it was Joseph who cared for us and provided for us, who protected us, and who faithfully taught Jesus everything from the Shema to how to make a perfectly fitting oxen yoke. Perhaps someday people will acknowledge my Joseph, honoring him for all he so willingly contributed to God’s own Son. Or maybe not. Maybe we shall all be forgotten, blown away like the chaff from the grain. It is so hard—even in the light of day—not to give in, not to surrender to this cloak of despair.
    Others are awake now. And soon we gather together in the gloomy rooms of this gloomy home that is feeling more and more like a prison to me, but little is said. What is left to say? Finally some of us decide we must return to the tomb and see for ourselves what has happened. We are like lost children as several of us silently slip outside and toward my son’s final resting place. We know it is Sabbath and most would consider it a sin for us to make this short journey. But we cannot help ourselves. We need to know.
    Once we are far enough away not to be observed, we speak in hushed tones, trying to encourage each other, reminding one another of things Jesus once said, promises he made. But our words emerge flat and without hope, lifelessly hanging in the chilly morning air.
    Finally we reach the tomb, but all