Strains of the Seasons: Grief
I slipped his stocking onto the brass hook, thinking back to Christmas mornings when it was packed too full to hang. Christmas stockings have always been a big deal in our family. I love picking out fun little surprises, the Tetris-packing to fit it all in on Christmas Eve, and watching the smiles as they are slowly unpacked.
I’d come into marriage with my childhood stocking my grandmother had knitted for me. But stockings weren’t a tradition in my husband’s Dutch family, so I’d eagerly cross-stitched a buck head onto the oversized camouflage stocking for our first Christmas together.
Since then, we’d added seven more stockings, one for each of our kids. Of course, I had to hang his stocking up like all the other Christmases. But this year, it would stay empty. It was our first Christmas without him, and his stocking was one more glaring reminder of our excruciating loss.
Six months earlier, I’d woken up to my husband’s last breaths on the pillow next to mine. There had been no sign or symptom anything was wrong. His sudden death sucked the air out of family rhythms and routines, the hopes and dreams and happiness of life as we knew it.
Navigating my children through grief while processing my own pain was overwhelming in every sense. I was exhausted from processing the hard emotions of grief, the aching loneliness when the house quieted at night, and his gaping absence at every turn.
Grief mocked us in the smiling faces of Christmas cards that arrived daily in the mail and the online pictures of families getting their Christmas tree or touring holiday lights.
It was all I could do to get my feet to the floor every morning and try to show up well to parent my children. How in the world would I pull off Christmas for them?
Maybe you’re experiencing your own deep loss and crushing loneliness this season. Maybe you thought this was the Christmas you’d add another stocking, and, instead, you’re grieving unexpected loss. Maybe you’ve buried a beloved parent or, unthinkably, a beloved child. Maybe a move has taken you from friends and family and left you without community. Or maybe a diagnosis has upended life as you knew it and now appointments and treatments fill what should be a thriving December calendar.
How can we celebrate the most wonderful time of the year when we’re tending a broken heart?
First, we can let go of expectations that this Christmas should look or feel the same as other years. It’s okay to skip traditions that are too painful right now or mix it up with something new.
And second, while it may sound surprising, we can let our grief bring fresh meaning to Christmas. Let me share three ways grief can shape this season:
Give a better gift
After my husband’s death, I didn’t have the energy or will to pin on a smile and fake that everything was fine. I knew it wouldn’t serve me or my children and would encourage them to run from their pain and hide their hard emotions.
In earlier years, I often rushed my kids through a hard emotion because it unsettled me or derailed the peace and quiet I idolized. Or I stepped in to rescue or fix situations to buffer them from pain. But in the wake of my husband’s passing, I couldn’t spare them from pain or fix it for them. Instead, I could only teach them what to do with it—to take their pain to Jesus and trust him when life felt crushing. Grief became a powerful catalyst, propelling us to Jesus.
The best gifts we give our children aren’t usually wrapped under a tree. They are instead the gifts that shape their character, model what an authentic walk of trusting God looks like, and, most of all, point them to Christ as the One who not only gives us salvation grace but sustaining grace.
I wish I could have given these gifts to my children through less traumatic circumstances. But here we were. And these hard-won lessons would prayerfully shape their lifelong walk with God as they navigated disappointments, trials, and challenges for years to come.
Focus on Immanuel, God with us
When Jesus took on flesh, he fulfilled the prophecy spoken by Isaiah: “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23).
God with us.
If Christmas is anything at all, it’s the celebration of Jesus—who left the glory and perfection of heaven to be with us. To not only suffer for us, but to suffer with us. We never, ever walk painful valleys alone.[1]
Our God doesn’t stay far off in our suffering. He’s a with-us God. God is tender and personal and near to the brokenhearted.[2] And even when holidays hurt profoundly, that gives us something miraculous to celebrate. Something to rejoice in and something even to sing about.
To prepare him room in the holidays looks different in years of deep loss and loneliness. Yet, we can hold space for both our deep grief and deep gratitude that God is with us in suffering.
Point to true hope
Painful circumstances “tend to show us the bankruptcy of human resources . . . and wean us off the world and sort of settle us on the heavenly hope.”[3] That was certainly true for me after the death of my husband. For the first time, I began to understand the brevity of life and the imminence of eternity. I saw the uselessness in storing up treasures on earth and the importance of storing up eternal treasure. A piece of my heart was in heaven, and I found myself longing for heaven too.
The thrill of hope this holiday season is the promise of eternity, through the babe lying in the manger. Our weary world can rejoice because Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, took our sin on the cross, and rose again to new life securing eternal life for all who believe.
When the holidays hurt, we can point our children and our own hearts to real hope. Real hope isn’t a Christmas wish list. It’s not an outcome or a relationship or a position. Real hope is the person of Christ.[4] And that hope assures us that God not only sees every one of our tears but also redeems them.[5]
When Christmas is strained by loss, we don’t need to fake our way through the season. We can let grief shape a Christmas we may never have planned, but one that is full of meaning in new ways.
[1] Psalm 23:4
[2] Psalm 34:18; Isaiah 49:16
[3] https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/59-5/the-purpose-of-trials
[4] 1 Timothy 1:1
[5] Psalm 56:8; Psalm 116:7-9; Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 21:4
