If grief is a mighty river, most of us live the majority of our days from the safety of the shore, where the occasional strong wave laps at our toes. But inevitably, at some point in our lives, we’ll find ourselves in over our heads, choking on grief’s bitter water and grasping for air. Our vessels, battered. Our souls, weary.

Are you experiencing grief at Christmas? This strange year has flooded the riverbanks with collective grief, as well as plunged many into the depths of specific heart-wrenching loss. Holidays can bring a fresh ache and pain, bringing memories to the surface or empty chairs into focus. We miss the presence of what or who we lost, and we feel more acutely the hole left behind.

That hole, borne of the searing pain of loss, can become a sacred space for the comfort Christmas brings.

We know Christmas is about more than presents and peppermint, but sometimes we forget it’s even more than a birthday party or reenactments of the Nativity.

Christmas celebrates the day God came into this world, with blood and anguish. After centuries of waiting, sighs, crying out met with silence, God’s voice joined ours’ beginning with a baby’s wail.

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