Editorial: A Manger Moment - Finding Grace in the Midst of Chaos

December had never been my friend. That year, it draped itself over me like a lead coat. As a physician, I’d just endured five consecutive days on call, missing yet another of my daughter’s college basketball games. Her talent far surpassed anything I’d achieved in my youth, and though I told myself my fervent support was a tribute to her, deep down I knew it was also a longing to live vicariously through the opportunities she’d earned. 

Parenthood, I’ve learned, often blurs the line between sacrifice and self-interest.

Guilt gnawed at me. My children—my daughter, her brothers—were accustomed to my absences. “Dad’s saving lives,” they’d say, their understanding a bittersweet balm. But that week, the weight felt heavier. My partner was out sick, leaving me to cover two practices. Enid’s hospitals overflowed with respiratory illnesses, and patients, irritable at derailed holiday plans, mirrored my own simmering frustration. By 9 p.m., I dragged myself home, craving silence and sleep.

The call came at 9:30. A woman in premature labor, no prenatal care, bleeding. Unassigned OB call. The words ignited a rage—righteous, searing. How could someone show up so unprepared? I rehearsed reprimands during the drive, indignation boiling.

Then, rounding a corner, my headlights caught a church’s Nativity display. The manger glowed—rough-hewn, unassuming. And suddenly, it struck me: Mary, too, had been a “drop-in” patient. No midwife, no plan, just faith and straw.

The epiphany—Webster’s “sudden perception of meaning”—arrived unbidden. Here I was, fuming over inconvenience, while two millennia ago, a young woman birthed hope in a stable. Emmanuel. God with us. Not in grandeur, but in grit and grace.

Ten years later, the child I delivered that night is a vibrant fourth grader. I’ve shared her “epiphany” story; she now grins and hugs me at each checkup, a living reminder that angels often arrive unannounced.

This season, as hustle obscures the holy, may we pause. Beneath the stress, the guilt, the weariness, the manger whispers: Look deeper. Grace blooms in unexpected places—a hospital room, a backroad church, the heart of a weary healer.

To you and yours, a joyous holiday. Emmanuel. He is with us.

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Life’s most profound lessons often come swaddled in humility. May we always make room.