For All We’ve Lost: Grief in the Holiday Season

I’ve been quiet in this space and on the internet, in general, most of this month. But we are about to enter my favorite time of year, Advent.

Ironically it’s also been a time when our family has faced more than our share of struggle. This will be our second Christmas, in recent years, of not being sure of our financial future. But we’ve also had Christmases where God worked out all the details and our dreams came true. House sales and job losses. Dream jobs and long periods of unemployment. It seems we’ve done it all.

Though none of these things is what I thought I’d want to experience during what is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, it has expanded my understanding of Advent.

During our time last year taking the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality class. one chapter was called Expanding Your Soul through Grief and Loss.

It was a hard chapter, mostly because it forced me to face the fact that I don’t really want to experience those things.

I know that grief and loss are part of life, but I just plain don’t want to face it most of the time. Maybe it’s just my emotional mental makeup, I like to check-boxes and get things done. My life can often be boiled down to a series of lists. I have trouble experiencing the present because I’m often planning for the future.

Grief is a strange beast, it cannot be predicted or ignored, at least not indefinitely and at our peril. Click To Tweet

I’m grieving the strangest things this year. Christmas Eve service in a packed church, voices raised in songs that have been sung for centuries. Praying the Nicene creed with believers throughout the world. My oldest children excited about being able to hold their own candles.

Even stressful things like travel to visit far-away family feels like a loss right now.

While there will still be some normalcy, like getting and decorating a Christmas tree, there is much that will be missed. I hear everyone talking these days about how resiliant kids are, but that doesn’t mean they don’t grieve too. But it may look different than ours and come across like being adversarial, or rude.

There is always something melancholy about this season. The lament of O’Come O’Come Emmanuel. Rereading the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah. While we live in hope, there is a certain sadness as well. Because we are waiting too. But it’s easy to forget that when we stuff our lives with hustle and sparkle.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying the magic of this season. (While our family culture hasn’t changed, I’ve even softened my view on Santa.) But we cannot forget within those fun and joyful moments the deeper magic. That before all time a plan was made for our redemption. That there existed in eternity a love so deep that he sacrificed all that he was and is for us.

The Incarnation is both beautiful and haunting in equal measure. I find myself stilled in my unworthiness and awed by such undeserved love. Click To Tweet

As you grieve all that we have lost in the last year and more that is inevitably to come, remember to look up.

“When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within
Upward I look, and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.”