For the last couple of days I’ve been trying to remember what life was like when I was fourteen.

And what I can tell you without hesitation is this: fourteen was some deep awkward, y’all.

However, I was fairly clueless about the level of awkward I exhibited on a daily basis, so I was happy as could be.

I had great friends. I thought Jake from Sixteen Candles was, like, THE CUTEST. I loved my black pants that had suspenders attached to them because they looked awesome with a frilly white blouse and red flats. I read everything I could get my hands on, especially if Danielle Steele wrote it. I memorized funny movies. I realized that writing an essay in English class was instantly familiar. I memorized every word of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album. I discovered that I loved having guy friends. I got my braces off. And most importantly at that point in my life, I made cheerleader.

Well, I was actually an alternate who got pulled off the bench when one of the girls on the squad moved out of town. Nevertheless, I was so thrilled to get to be a part that I practically pledged my allegiance to Two Bits, toe-touches, and pom-pom routines when I showed up for my first practice.

And here’s what strikes me when I look back on that time in my life: if I had a care in the world, I didn’t know it. I faithfully went to school and dance and piano and youth group and Family Night Supper. My friend Melissa G. turned fifteen before everybody else, and along with her driver’s license she received a sah-weet brown Honda Accord hatchback, also known as our ticket to freedom. Melissa drove all of our girlfriends around on the weekends, and the reprieve from our parents’ sedans made Saturday nights feel like the final dance scene in Footloose.

(Well, if Footloose had taken place at the Subway on 8th Street in my hometown.)

(And if it featured a supporting cast of ninth grade girls who thought the Spicy Italian sandwich was, like, the tastiest, fanciest food item ever because it was, like, SO NEW YORK CITY to eat salami in Mississippi.)

Even with all the unavoidable early-teenager awkward, I can honestly say that life at fourteen was, like, totally major. My friends and I experimented with blue mascara and frosted pink lipstick and told each other how pretty we looked. We teased our bangs to staggering new heights thanks to curling irons and Vidal Sassoon hairspray. We knew all the words to “Purple Rain” and “When Doves Cry” and sang both at the top of our lungs. And if we wanted to rock out, well, there were only two possible options: (1) “Born in the USA” with Bruce Springsteen, or (2) PETRA.

Church culture ran deep, y’all.

We lived, for the most part, in a bubble of unconditional love and acceptance. In the grand scheme of things, uncertainty and rejection were nowhere on our relational radar. I had no idea at the time, of course, but fourteen cemented my sense of being connected to the people around me. Fourteen gave me a down-to-the-marrow sense of belonging and security.

And while part of that came from my funny, smart, Spicy Italian sandwich-loving friends, here’s what I see so clearly now: the primary people who passed along the gift of belonging were the older women in my life. Hands down. No question. It really didn’t matter if they were a little older or a lot older; the point is that they looked out for me, encouraged me, taught me, listened to me, and blessed me. It almost felt like there was an endless reserve of people—Mama, Sister, my aunt Chox, my friends’ mamas, my sister’s friends, my teachers—who cared about my friends and me and wanted the absolute best for us.

And while yes, of course, everybody went through tough times and families struggled and life was by no means perfect, there was very much a mentality that we could—and should—help each other through just about anything.

We had wonderful men in our lives, too. Oh my goodness. I certainly don’t want to diminish their enormous influence. But as a very young woman, the love and care and nurturing of older women taught me a lesson I didn’t even know I was learning.

Everybody—no matter the age—craves a safe place with safe people.

It’s a truth I absorbed as I moved from geometry class with Mrs. Carlisle, who patiently taught me as I struggled, to English class with Mrs. Reynolds, who continually pushed me as I soared. I picked up on it as I sat with my piano teacher and talked about way more than music, as I watched Sister come home on the weekends and sit on Mama’s bed—or at Chox’s kitchen table—for hours while they caught up on all the latest news. I tucked it deep in my heart, no doubt, when my older friends Ginger, Melinda, and Carah Lynn taught me the fine art of playing air drums to “Born to Run,” when my friend Laura’s mama would talk to us about God and grace and the blessing of community while we played round after round of Trivial Pursuit.

It’s a pretty basic idea, right?

Nonetheless, it may very well be the very best gift that fourteen ever gave me.

And I’ve carried it with me ever since.

Since I have a job where I spend a big chunk of the school year listening to teenagers, I’m always on the lookout for resources that will “speak the kids’ language” and “be real about issues” and “not sound too much like a lecture on bike safety from Mike Brady.”

Well, a little over a year ago I was on the hunt for a resource about lust (no, really, it’s fine—I feel like it’s a good sign that we can talk about lust this early in our time together), and I ran across a sermon by Matt Chandler called “Freedom in the Fight.”1 For the record, it is one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard in terms of addressing the core issues behind lust and pornography, but feel free to totally exhale because I have zero intention of addressing those two topics.

However, there’s most definitely something from that sermon that I want to talk about. It’s a short verse from the book of Romans that Chandler (Matt? Rev. Chandler? Pastor Matt? Mandler?) references about five minutes in, and his countercultural application of the verse resonated like crazy with me:

As we are his people and belong to him, God has asked us to interact in a certain way with one another. We are to care for one another, serve one another, and in fact outdo one another in honor, which means my head is always on a swivel looking to honor you, bless you, serve you, lower myself and exalt you for the sake of Christ, for the name of Christ every time I’m around you.2

Those are some pretty tall marching orders, don’t you think? And since I didn’t know if I’d ever really noticed that particular mandate in Scripture—that whole idea of outdoing one another in honor—I paused the sermon and hopped on the Google and looked it up.

Sure enough, I found the ESV translation of Romans 12:10: “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”

That verse rolled around in the back of my head as I listened to the rest of the message, and for the next week or so, I was tempted to do that self-righteous thing where I regarded the verse as something everybody else in the whole world needed to hear so that they could work out their personal issues.

For example.

I’ll tell you what: somebody needs to tell Twitter about Romans 12:10.

Or.

Dear People in the Waiting Room Who Have Opted Not to Silence Your Phones: It is only my opinion, but I feel that a spirit of brotherly affection will be much more attainable when I can no longer hear you playing Candy Crush, hallelujah and amen.

And.

If I walk in this drugstore and the cashier screams “WELCOME TO WALGREENS!” I am going to turn around and tell him that his words do not in fact feel honoring to me because I AM AN INTROVERT and YELLING IS NOT VERY LOVING, SIR.

Eventually I started to think a little more deeply (and a lot less judge-y) about the words in Romans 12:10, and somewhere along the way, I discovered some insightful commentary from John Piper:

The “one another” is not everybody, but fellow believers in the church. This doesn’t mean you can’t have affection for an unbeliever. You surely can. And it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t honor unbelievers. You surely should (1 Peter 2:7). But the focus here is on the church. Wherever else you have affection, have it here. And whomever else you honor, show honor here. So honoring means treating people better than they deserve.3

Piper (Most Rev. Piper? Brother John? JPipes?) goes on to say this:

I think it boils down to “prefer to honor rather than be honored.” If you try to out honor someone it means you love to honor more than you love to be honored. You enjoy elevating others to honor more than you enjoy being elevated to honor. . . . Cultivate the love of honoring others.4

I think most of us would agree that all of this honoring and loving and elevating sounds very lovely and kind and generous. It’s so great in theory, isn’t it? That’s why I couldn’t help but wonder: What does it look like, really? Where in Scripture do we see it in action? Who “[cultivates] the love of honoring others”?

And yes, I know: JESUS. Sure.

PAUL. Of course.

But where else do we see people sincerely looking out for one another? Loving one another with brotherly affection? Where do we see folks outdoing one another in showing honor?

COLOR ME CURIOUS, Mandler and JPipes.

All of those questions ultimately reminded me of a passage I’d read in Luke 1 earlier in the year (remember when I mentioned that back in the intro?) (forgive me if I’m making your head spin with all of this thorough biblical scholarship) (*sarcasterisks*), and we’re going to get to that in just a few minutes. Because I happen to think that Mary and Elizabeth had the whole “showing honor” thing down pat.

When it came to honor, those two were real pros.

Before we talk about Mary and Elizabeth, we need to make sure we’re clear on how the Lord set the stage for Luke 1. So if you don’t mind, let’s travel back to 430 BC (-ish).

I’d encourage you to put on some comfy clothes, grab a light snack, and please, by all means, stay hydrated.

In the final book of the Old Testament, Malachi had a heart-to-heart with the people of Israel. They’d been back in the Promised Land for over a hundred years, and just like we’ve all been tempted to do in moments of perceived self-sufficiency, they got complacent. They turned to their own plans and their own interests and camped out in the wilderness again.

So, since God’s people were bent on stubborn rebellion, they needed what my mama would call “a good talkin’-to.” Maybe that’s why the tone of this final book of the Old Testament almost feels like a family meeting; it was time to huddle up and STOP TALKING, KIDS, and listen carefully to what the Lord was saying. In this case the Lord opted to speak through His prophet Malachi, and His first words were tender and kind even though His children were way out of line:

“I have loved you,” says the Lord. (Mal. 1:2)

That had to be sweet assurance, especially since the Israelites needed some significant course correction. God gently reminded them of His heart before He addressed the laundry list of offenses, and with His love for His people clearly established (this would be—what?—the 4,582nd time He’d told them?), Malachi moved through the improvement areas the Lord had identified: the priesthood, sacrifices, obedience, tithing, judgment, and repentance.

So basically Malachi covered some totally lighthearted topics in his first three chapters. And when he eventually neared the end of everything the Lord told him to say, he passed along a promise in chapter 4:

But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. (Mal. 4:2)

That’s a pretty big promise—that “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings”—but Malachi wasn’t finished. In verses 5–6, Malachi closed the chapter with the Lord’s assurance that there was one more significant somebody on the way:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.

At that point, to put it in modern terms, Malachi dropped the mic.

For the next four hundred years, no one heard a single word from the Lord or His prophets.

But the people of Israel never forgot God’s promises.

And they waited.

Not having been alive during the Roman Empire, it’s a little difficult for me to imagine what it was like to live in Israel around 6 BC. In those four-hundred-plus years since Malachi relayed God’s prophecy to His people, the silence from the Lord must have been deafening. It must have been discouraging. And being fully in touch with my own impatience and strong sense of entitlement, it’s pretty easy for me to imagine how frustrated and confused the Israelites must have been as they waited for the Messiah to appear. I can’t help but think that if I had been around back then, hoping so desperately that the Lord would show Himself, I would have expected that whenever something finally happened, it was going to be big.

Huge.

GINORMOUS.

I mean, if Malachi had thrown down the whole “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings” gauntlet, then I would be on the lookout for a spectacle. I would be thinking in terms of dark skies, parting clouds, trembling mountains, and whatever/whoever God promised arriving on the scene with some sort of dramatic soundtrack playing in the background.

Okay. I know. The Israelites didn’t really have soundtracks. But I’d at least expect some trumpets. A few harps. A lyre or two.

But as it turned out, there wasn’t even a tiny bit of fanfare. In fact, the first hint that God was up to something new? That the Messiah might very well be on the way?

An angel named Gabriel visited a priest named Zechariah in the quiet of the temple in Jerusalem. There was no pomp, no grandeur, and no sudden shift in the atmosphere that might foreshadow something life-changing on the horizon.

There was just an angel (granted, that’s kind of spectacular) and an old priest.

That’s how God broke the silence and signaled that He was about to take up residence on earth.

So flashy, right?

The only reason Zechariah was even inside the temple that day was because his number came up (there were so many priests that they took turns going into the Holy Place to burn incense). He had served faithfully for years, and though he and his wife Elizabeth “were righteous in God’s eyes, careful to obey all of the Lord’s commandments. . . . They had no children because Elizabeth was unable to conceive, and they were both very old” (Luke 1:6–7 nlt).

And when Zechariah saw Gabriel at the altar, he was understandably terrified. I’ll go ahead and wager a guess that he probably wasn’t expecting a fertility update.

Sure enough, though, Gabriel told Zechariah that the Lord had heard his prayer, and Elizabeth was going to have a son named John, who “will be great in the eyes of the Lord” (1:15a nlt). Gabriel went on to say that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit before he was even born (that is fancy), and then he continued to let the prophetic punches fly:

He will turn many Israelites to the Lord their God. He will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and he will cause those who are rebellious to accept the wisdom of the godly. (1:16–17 nlt)

Can you even imagine? I’m sitting here thinking about how I hoped that our son, Alex, would smile by the time he was three months old and then maybe walk by his first birthday, and Zechariah got a rundown of his kid’s destiny before Elizabeth was even pregnant. I mean, maybe I’m nineteen kinds of shallow, but I’m pretty sure that if all I heard was that I was going to have a child who was filled with the Holy Spirit even in the womb, I’d jump on Twitter to share the news within three minutes and get the hashtag #LifeGoals trending in record time.

I’d also be tempted to post #BigDeal, #GodSaidSo, and #WorthTheWait, but that might be prideful.

Sure enough, Elizabeth got pregnant. Scripture tells us that she stayed inside for about five months. (I believe I’ve already established that if I ever experienced a pregnancy in my early sixties, I might not ever leave my house again.) Then, in Elizabeth’s sixth month, Gabriel made another appearance; this time with a young girl in Nazareth named Mary.

And if the Israelites thought Elizabeth’s pregnancy was unusual?

They hadn’t seen anything yet.

I was thirty-two years old when I found out we were expecting our son.

I’d suspected as much for a few days. I’d been fighting off nausea and a general feeling of ick for over a week, but I’d kept my suspicions to myself and spent the better part of several days watching CMT and old episodes of The Real World while I sipped on ginger ale and picked apart sleeves of saltine crackers.

But by the fifth day of Nausea Fest, I was almost certain that there was a baby on the way. So around seven that night, when my husband David and I were in the middle of a discussion about, I don’t know, something super important like Alias and Sydney Bristow and all the reasons why I thought I might make a fine CIA operative, I offhandedly mentioned that hey, here’s some news, I think I might be pregnant.

We were in the car and on the way to the drugstore within three minutes.

A half hour later, two little blue lines confirmed what I’d suspected for almost a week. David and I grinned nonstop for a solid forty-eight hours. We walked around in a haze of possibility and disbelief and excitement, knowing full well that our lives were going to change drastically but not having any way to anticipate how that change would look and feel.

But here’s what occurs to me now: I was a pretty typical age for pregnancy. I was married. I had been to the doctor and told him I was ready. I had started prenatal vitamins and stocked up on folic acid. I knew full well that pregnancy was a very real and deeply desired possibility for me.

Even still, those two blue lines nearly bowled me over. As excited as we were, as much as we wanted that sweet baby, we were stunned to come face-to-face with the reality of it all. I don’t want to oversimplify, but it occurs to me that the fresh awareness of new life almost always arrives with a little awe attached.

So when Gabriel appeared to Mary—who many scholars agree was somewhere around fourteen years old—well, I can only imagine her level of shock as he explained how the final piece of the prophecy from Malachi was going to fall into place. Gabriel didn’t mince words, and the gist of what he said was this:

“Hey. So. You’re gonna have a baby. He’s going to be a little boy, and you will call Him Jesus. And the Lord will give Him David’s throne so He can reign over the house of Jacob forever, and oh, by the way, His kingdom will have no end” (Luke 1:31–33, Sophie paraphrase).

I wouldn’t blame Mary for one second if she stepped back and said, “UM, HAVE WE MET, STRANGER ANGEL?”

But to Mary’s credit, she never doubted. She did ask a question, but that—at least in my opinion—just cements her spot at the top of the Biblical Understatement Tournament of Champions leaderboard. Because while there are lots of ways she could have responded when an angel showed up to tell her that she was going to give birth to the Son of God, I think “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34) showed some remarkable composure and restraint in the midst of great shock and surprise.

Even more impressive was that within minutes of hearing Gabriel’s answer, Mary was all in with the Lord’s plan. She said, “Behold, I am a servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word” (1:38). No matter which way you look at it, her obedience is mind-boggling. She was a young girl, she was uneducated, she was poor, and she was from Nazareth. She was an unlikely candidate to be mother of the Savior of the world, and odds were that people would call her a liar—or crazy—if she shared any part of her conversation with Gabriel.

On top of all that, the Israelites were expecting the Messiah to arrive in some super-spectacular way, so Mary was destined, to a certain extent, to bump up against people’s disappointments and doubts.

Nonetheless, she trusted Gabriel. She trusted the Lord. And when Gabriel told Mary that her cousin Elizabeth was also unexpectedly pregnant? Mary “arose and went with haste” to Elizabeth’s home seventy miles away in Judea. The trip was long and dangerous. But Mary didn’t hesitate.

Can you imagine? She had to have been in a state. She was just minding her business, maybe thinking about her cute fiancé, and within a couple of minutes, Gabriel turned her whole world upside down. But Gabriel’s news about Elizabeth meant that Mary wasn’t nearly as alone in the whole visited-by-an-angel / unexpectedly expecting arena. SHE HAD A PERSON. She had a “Me, too.”

And here’s a big ole kicker: Mary’s person just happened to be fifty years her senior.

Now doesn’t that just make this situation all the more interesting?

When I think back on my life at fourteen from a present-day perspective, I realize oh-so-clearly just how sheltered I was. Unlike Mary, I was not at all acquainted with the phrase “earth-shattering,” and the only thing that had really forced me out of my comfort zone was asking a boy to a summer dance that was sort of a rite of passage for the girls in my hometown.

I’m also well aware that if I had in fact been approached by an angel at that point in my life, I probably would have rolled my eyes and offered a quick reminder that, like, I really wanted to choreograph a new dance to “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” and he was, like, totally messing with my plans.

So it’s probably safe to say that the majority of Mary’s fourteen-year-old experience wouldn’t have lined up with my own. I could not and cannot imagine the level of vulnerability and fear she must have experienced.

But there’s one thing I think Mary and I both learned at fourteen, even if we learned it through completely different circumstances.

Everybody—no matter the age—craves a safe place with safe people.

And if we could build on that idea just a little bit, there’s one more thing I want us to remember, because I think it’s important.

We can find comfort and encouragement from someone in similar circumstances even if we don’t belong to the same demographic.

It’s so true, y’all. All too often, though, we look to the folks at our same age and stage and miss the wisdom and the perspective of someone who’s a little farther along.

In Mary’s case, that someone was named Elizabeth, and she was about seventy miles and fifty years down the literal and figurative road.

And while I certainly don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver, I believe that the Lord can teach us so much through these two women. He wanted them walking through life together, and if we look closely, I think we can see some of the reasons why. In fact, I believe that we can identify some of what modern-day Christians are missing on the relational front if we look closely at how Mary and Elizabeth honored and cared for each other.

Because the provision that the Lord had in store for them?

The relational riches that were about seventy miles south of Nazareth?

Well, they were even better than Melissa G.’s Honda Accord hatchback that I mentioned earlier.

That, my friends, is saying something.

So for the next few chapters, we’re going to hang out in Judea with Mary and Elizabeth. Their relationship can teach us a thing or nine—because funny things can happen when we open our eyes and our hearts and step outside our bubbles and oh, have mercy, our generations. We’re going to look at how the Lord lined up their seemingly different paths, and we’re going to see that despite the fact that they were in drastically different seasons of life, they were both on the verge of callings that would alter the course of human history.

We’ll also take a few field trips to the Deep South—to Mississippi and Alabama and I want to say Georgia but the traffic is just terrible in Atlanta—and see how some of the lessons have played out in present-day life.

Feel free to play some dramatic soundtrack music at this juncture.

Trumpets, harps, lyres—and maybe a few banjos, too.