These are the days with the least light. You feel it, don’t you? It’s not just a lack of sunshine, it’s the darkness that’s settled deep in your bones. Maybe you’re not at the center of some sadness, but you’re holding the hurt of another you love, and we just wish this pain would all go away, right?

Platitudes may not mean much at this moment, so allow me to share a story. Let me tell you about a lovely day I had this summer, by first confessing that once I never thought I’d have a good day again. Years ago, I thought my clouds would never lift nor would my darkness ever end.

Perhaps that’s you now? A week till Christmas, but all the lights are out. Several days still to survive “have yourself a merry little christmas” but your heart is heavy and your troubles, near.

On this August day I mentioned, I sat outside a castle on a lake in Switzerland. Swans swam around a centuries old fortress, and the Swiss Alps majestically lined the shoreline. The scenery was perfection.

I’d just finished a budget-friendly writing retreat with missionaries, and planned a Saturday of solo travel around a few towns on Lake Geneva. These new experiences had me beaming with joy. After touring the incredible castle, I sipped on the most delicious pre-packaged latte (that included a small chocolate, because Switzerland), and snacked on some pita chips and a tin of canned tuna I’d picked up at the village Aldi’s (the European version is equally wonderful I can report!). The silly snacks satisfied me in a deep way, with weather that was perfect, as well.

Late summer sunshine met my skin, a match to a faintly burning wick within, and I felt a flame like contentment catching fire.

There was no rush to leave as this warmth enveloped me. I soaked up the culture, the beauty, the lazy Saturday, gratitude that I’d navigated the foreign trains all on my own, and bubbling excitement for the afternoon leg of the trip to a town I couldn’t wait to see. 

And yet, my grief showed up with me there, too. The ache of loss lingered alongside ebullience. Amidst all those embers of contentment, the ashes needed a voice.

I wondered what it would be like to not be alone and have a loving husband traveling with me.
I wished there were curious children by my side.
I considered my PTSD, and how fear almost kept me from risking the unknown train ride.

But the flame within me kept glowing goodness. Sparks emerged out of the ashes, and serenity smiled across my face. There outside the magical Chateau de Chillon, I found myself reimagining, too, right there along with the ache of grief. 

Maybe I’ll become an author and travel the world.
Maybe I’ll visit a new castle each day and write stories that inspire.
Maybe I’ll move to a villa in these Swiss hills and fall asleep to cowbells and brilliant twinkling stars each night. 

With the gentle acceptance of my grief, I enjoyed the fun of thinking about where those sparks would travel, imagining new dreams for a life I didn’t expect. The glow grew, and carried me through a day that I’ll treasure forever, a day that would never have come to be were it not for the suffering that sent me there.

The Honest Truth About Grief Never Ending

So here’s my strange comfort to grieving friends this Christmas…

Your grief will always be part of you. Nearly a decade into my grief journey, the ache that I wished would have gone away by now hasn’t. The intensity of the trauma has lessened and healing has been the kindling for my current contentment, but there are many moments during the holidays (well, any day, even sitting outside a castle!) that find me still hurting, still grieving. 

All you can do these days, especially if the trauma of your loss is still new, is go there — go to the depths. Lament what’s been lost. Let your tears purge the raw pain. What’s happened is not how things are supposed to be, and your body knows it, and needs care and comfort.

From someone who has a terrible track record of asking for what I need, I’d offer to you my grieving friend, perhaps just a gentle reminder that no one person can read our thoughts, and we so wish they could when we’re hurting, but maybe, just send the text. Send the text that says, “I need you. I don’t want you to say anything but please just be with me.”

And for those of us more on solid ground, can we be more bold to butt into someone’s mess and send the text too? “I’m coming to visit. I’ll bring cookies and cocoa, and I won’t say one awkward word. Your tears won’t scare me away, I’m here for you.”

Sorry if I’m breaking the truth to you that no friend, spouse, sibling, or neighbor can read your thoughts (we all have to learn sometime), but there is a greater comfort, one who truly does know. God, the inexplicably mysterious three-in-one omnipotent Creator — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He knows every ache, every wound, every scream, every utterance of your “why?!.”

The poetry of the Psalms says that God collects your tears, from all this world’s brokenness, in a bottle. And one day for those who believe, we’ll live on, in a renewed earth with renewed bodies, so who can even fathom what He’ll creatively do with those tears? We all believed in Santa once, so maybe if you’ve buried hope as an adult — you could try out that childlike faith again and see how it feels?

So let the tears fall, they’re caught and you’re held — by the Father who has not abandoned you.

In your grief, whether it’s a flood right now and you don’t know if you’ll survive, or it’s been decades and there’s such a drought that you’re bone-dry, remember that God sent his son Jesus to heal. Yes, death and destruction are a part of this world still, for now, but Jesus is healing too — He sees you and knows you in your pain. He does not snuff out a faintly burning wick, as God proclaimed to the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 42 and Matthew 12).

And where there’s a wick, there’s a way. Refining fire that fans the flames of hope and meaning.

Your Beautiful Complex Soul

For a few weeks after my Switzerland Saturday, I wrestled with my feelings of contentment, and dare I even say, happiness. I felt anxious over the joy I experienced, and found myself apologizing to people, or over-explaining why I went on the trip, or how I could have such a good time traveling. This angst kept building up inside of me, until I realized that I felt like I needed to apologize to myself!

I’m getting choked up even writing these words — it was as if my grief, which is a part of me, felt like she was being abandoned. A few weeks after the high of the trip, I found myself crying again. How can I feel happy, when grief has been so much a part of my life for the past ten years? Was I betraying my younger, grieving self?

The one who ached so much through betrayal. 
The one who cried so much after divorce.
The one who screamed out in searing physical back pain.
The one who wept over the absence of the family her heart always longed for. 

Once those tears subsided, God brought me back to remembering that castle-side in Switzerland, where the complexity of my soul was shining bright, and I pray becoming even like a burning bush where God’s glory is ever evident in me.

My grief is still within, and I’ve made peace with always acknowledging those tender places that have softened me, where God is tilling and sowing and planting new seeds. Cultivating that growth is not abandonment — it’s stewardship of everything he’s given me.

Now I see my grief right there alongside the blossoming part of me. 

The one that’s learning a deeper love.
The one that’s finding a truer identity.
The one that’s healing in health of body, mind, and soul. 
The one that’s expanding her heart to love others.

Your grief can grow something beautiful, too.

If there’s any abandonment, it happens when we bury. Pretend it’s all okay, keeping the soil of our heart so hard-packed that nothing else can grow. To quote a modern-day prophet, Sheila Walsh — friend, “it’s okay, to not be okay.”

Why You Need Christmas When You’re Grieving

What’s wild is that this Christmas season is the time that we can feel less alone in our grief, because our mess is worthy of knowing, of comfort. God didn’t abandon us messed up, broken, betraying, dying humans. 

He came to be with us. 
He descended from the heavenly realms.
He became a human, knowing all the aches of our race, and remember — Jesus wept, too.

But through Christ’s death, there came the greatest story of newness and meaning that you could ever need. Redemption. Hope that your suffering has meaning, and all of your sin, shame, and sorrow will be transformed. 

Oh friend, my own heart holds aches, and I hurt for so many of you, too. But remember there are embers. You are a wick, and these ashes will always have purpose within you. 

There will be better days ahead, perhaps with castles and swans and train trips through Switzerland. You will be fanned to life again, if only dimly here in this world that can still be good, but brilliantly one day with Jesus. 

Today, cry, and yet trust that in the great tomorrow, something new will come.

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I’ll close with this melancholic rendition of “Come Thou Long Expected Savior.” Jesus came once to redeem, and He’ll come again to renew — He longs to be your strength and consolation.