This Christmas

While Christmas is by far my favorite time of year, it is also one that carries a large amount of emotional downs for me. Lost is tough no matter what time of year it happens. I secretly wish that this time of year would be exempt from such pain though. It’s sort of a silent suffering the more that time passes. If anyone tells you that grief goes away or gets better, I’d actually say it doesn’t, it only changes shape. Looks different and feels different over time. For me it’s become a deep longing not for what (or who) no longer is, but for everything not yet experienced. The seasons that will never be experienced. The place where the grief now lives. When you realize that life is new, different, and even good without those you’ve lost, it’s a different kind of pain. One that’s mixed with happiness, joy, guilt, and sadness. The sadness is always there. Waiting to overshadow every good thing that has come. For me, the loss comes from several different experiences over time. The first, my brother. Gone in a tragic, confusing death on Christmas Day nearly 20 years ago now. Just over two years ago my mother died after a cancer diagnosis. In the same year, I walked the path of divorce. Each one of these became a test of my relationship with God. Each time, the only thing I new how to feel was lost.

This time last year, after the gifts were under the tree, we’d had our Christmas Eve cocoa and opened our usual Christmas Eve gifts and put out the cookies, I sat. Quietly sitting with the ongoing internal pain as I gazed at our tree. There was a glimmer of difference though. The pain wasn’t just pain and sadness. It was now wrapped up with excitement, peace, love and comfort that at one point, I honestly could not imagine ever feeling again. Doing anything had been so emotionally difficult in the recent prior years, I just couldn’t imagine feeling “good” feelings again. I believed it would come, but let me be honest here, my belief was definitely a step of Faith! I had to believe it would happen because I believed that Jesus came to save us. I also knew that I couldn’t save myself.

The birth of Jesus is so profound. As a parent I can’t even fathom deliberately sending my child to meet death to be the savior of all mankind. But God did. Can you wrap your mind around that? Can you see how there is truly nothing greater than His love for us? As I pondered all of this in my mind, I returned back to my own pain and suffering – my lost. In that moment I realized, even through it all, how much I’ve gained by keeping my faith in God. While I may have felt alone plenty of times, I wasn’t. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the grief we experience. The truth is, people will hurt you and we will all inevitably lose someone we love in death. The real challenge is staying with God. Feeling His love and His goodness when we can’t feel anything but pain. Remaining in His presence when you simply would rather hide. Creating something new in your life. It’s why we celebrate Christmas. Jesus came so that we can continuously create something new. He saves us. Over and over again. Grief has a way of attempting to steal that which is already ours. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t grieve, but rather to say that as a believer in Christ, the hard work is to continue to believe in this Christmas, the reason the world celebrates, while we create something new in the process.

This Christmas, when I’m tempted to focus more on what I’ve lost, I’m reminded of what I’ve gained. I don’t believe I’ll ever be rid of the pieces of the experiences that I’ve walked through. But I do believe that Jesus continuously saves me. That He is ever present, lifting me up. If you are walking through some type of grief – trust God. Even when you don’t feel it. Trust that this Christmas you can celebrate being saved through the birth of Jesus. Regardless of what your world feels like a savior has been given to us.

Merry Christmas, Lashonda