A teenage girl eats french fries in the diner, lifting each stick of potato slowly, carefully to her mouth. She tells the waitress she’s 32 weeks pregnant and a quiet, knowing moment passes between them.

She’s tired, this young mother to be. Her hair is pulled back into a pony tail. Her eyes are sunken into shallow, red pools. Her movement is slow, her voice is subdued, and every time she lifts another french fry to her mouth my eyes fix on the white hospital band around her wrist.

She is sitting less than ten feet from me, but she lives in another world.

And I wonder if this Mary of the Diner will one day see her son walk on water. I wonder if Mary of the Diner will one day realize her baby boy has come to save our sons and daughters.  And in the midst of this unexpected Advent mediation I wonder who will be her Joseph.

I’m not sure I can explain this – I’m not sure I can even make sense of it myself. But in the diner tonight I met Mary.