The coffee is warm, but the chair across from me is empty. I sit quiet. Close my eyes. Remember it all. There was love. So much of it. Never contained. Never rationed. It overflowed. It spilled over and ran down the sides.
The abundance that was makes the absence that is…more acute, more palpable, more piercing.
This season holds such joy for so many, but for some of us, it also holds an ache that is impossible to ignore. As a longing widow, as a daughter facing my first Christmas without my daddy, I feel it deeply.
I am sad today. I just am.
How about you?
It’s okay, you know, if you are. Please know that. You don’t need to suppress your sorrow. Or lament it. Or feel bad about it. It’s okay to miss, to mourn, to sit with the silence.
Hope comes easier on some days than others. Today, for me, it’s fragile. It’s tenuous. It’s fleeting.
Nevertheless, hope is what I’m banking on today. Hope that the story isn’t over. Hope that one day, the pain won’t sting so sharply. Hope that joy—irrepressible, transcendent, and enduring—will find its way back into the cracks of a heart so broken.
For you, for me, for all who grieve, I pray hope that holds—hope that doesn’t disappoint—even in the face of all that does.
May the One we celebrate today lavish His grace, enduring and sufficient, on your aching hearts. May it steady and accompany you as you navigate days you never dreamed you’d face alone. For if there’s one promise Christmas makes clear, it is that we are, in fact, never completely alone.
God is with us. Our Emmanuel, who came to us as one of us. Making Himself known in the miraculous and the mundane. Ordering our steps. Sharing our grief and our joy—our gladness and our sadness.
Invisible, but unmistakable.
Fellow grievers, you are not alone. You are loved beyond measure. May God’s presence envelop you today, offering hope for sorrow, beauty for ashes, and peace for pain. May the consolations of His love be especially evident and personal for you today.
May the hope that holds be exceeded only by the presence of the One who holds.
Our Christ.
Our Emmanuel.
Our soon coming King.
In His name.
In His grace.
In His mercy.
We face this day, bolstered by His presence, and carried by His love.
May His every-morning mercies be ours, today, and may they be enough.
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
~ 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝟐𝟏:𝟒