6 more days until Christmas.
My 2nd without my husband, and it is rough.
Going through all of the firsts after a loss is difficult. What I’m discovering in this second year is that there is an added sting of finality. Not that I didn’t know it was final last year, but the hurt is so very overwhelming during these special seasons, that I think we protect ourselves by compartmentalizing all of the difficult layers of grief. This time around, I’ve been wrestling with the magnitude of reality. My new reality. A reality that can at times feel lonely, sad, and isolated.
It’s weird. I mean, I have personal goals, places I want to see, things I want to experience, and most importantly spiritual milestones that I’m excited to reach. I am truly grateful for the life God has allowed me to have. He is good! And… at the very same time, I miss my husband and the grief can be suffocating.
The same isolation, loneliness and sadness I continue to feel exists alongside the joy, fullness, and peace that God so lavishly pours out upon my life. And… Christmas, amplifies this.
After all, isn’t that what Christmas is? This dichotomous, complex celebration of life and death? The season is both celebrating the birth of a Savior, and HIS ultimate sacrifice. I kind of exist in a perpetual dual-state now too. Feeling both joy and sadness. Neither emotion takes from the other… as a result, Christmas is hitting different this year.
Think about it, if you haven’t: God loved us so much that HE gave HIS son. HIS son wasn’t forced out of Heaven, HE chose this. This place! HE came as a helpless baby. Oh, we remember 8 pound, 6 ounce baby Jesus on Christmas. We swaddle that baby, sing the songs, light the lights. We love Christmas. But to ignore that, that baby came to die… is missing the point. YES, HE was the perfect gift. The gift of a payment for a debt that we could not pay. That God loved us enough to spare us from. That holy night, was holy because through it came salvation in the form of a perfect sacrifice.
Christmas is complex.
It is both life and death, joy and mourning, birth and sacrifice.
Jesus came to satisfy the wrath of a holy God. Because God is love, he has wrath.
Think about it… so do you. Pick who you love the very most. Then, think about if someone hurt them, or if the one you love, hurt you. The depth of anger, the potential of rage exists exponentially more for those we love. So, if God is love (on a scale of love that we can’t even compete on) how can he not have wrath? But, HE didn’t pour out HIS wrath on us… in love HE provided the way. Jesus was the propitiation, literally HE offered HIMSELF as the taker-of-wrath for us.
How does a believer reconcile those two things? The goodness of God and the fullness we experience with HIM, and the pain, loneliness, and heartbreak of living in this sinful world that is filled with sickness, frailty and death? Merry Christmas!
For real.
How does a believer reconcile pain and blessing… look at the manger.
We can absolutely go through this life experiencing what we think are conflicting emotions. Not only “go through life” enjoy the snot out of this place, all the while, hurting.
I think it’s the lie of this world that tells us we can only be one or the other. Happy OR sad. I think Christmas is the perfect example to us that we can exist in this life being happy AND sad.
Living with grief… who knew, it’s like Christmas.
Merry Christmas everyone AND I share with you all a moment of gratitude for reading my little journal entries all of these years. We’ve crossed over into the thousands of readers now, and that’s pretty darn humbling. THANK YOU!