HOLIDAYS

The holidays are filled with joy. Except when that joy has been replaced with pain, physical loneliness, and emotional distress. All the befores have changed, you can’t do any of it the same as you feel that pain. Stockings, gifts, family! Your heart desperately trying to beat the same. They bring emotional distress, and I have had to let myself grieve. Like walking through a fog. That fog hasn’t lifted. I always just wanted to be together; that was the gift I wished it wasn’t hard, I wasn’t trying to be challenging what I wanted couldn’t be bought or wrapped. 

Some say I was hard to buy for or complicated, but it was really this simple gift I desired the most. As long as we were together! Things are different because of someone else’s choices, and now that gift I always wished for will never be the same. What was taken can never be returned? 

Giving yourself permission to grieve and not come off looking crazy. But recovering from such a devastating blow takes time. No matter how much I try and rush it. Maybe somethings you never bounce back from? I have learned to identify my triggers, and the holidays are one of them. Depression, isolation, and hopeless. I want to find an island come October and not come back till the end of February because every store, every commercial all of it feels heavy. So I run from the triggers I get far away from it. 

Christ’s love can help with the pain of it if you allow him to make you stronger and give you hope. I hold onto the hope my future holidays will be filled with joy and gratitude for what He has brought me through. This sweet little gift 

will always remind me of that. 

So many times I have wanted to end this story, I wanted to not just run from it. I have been told this isn’t the end of my story. Satan is powerful also, and I fight daily battles with how he wants me to end the story. 

I have been told that it’s not uncommon for intense feelings of sadness to last years, three, four, five, or six. 

Yes, the grieving process is different for everyone, but that there will be an end. 

I have had to remind myself that he knows the end, he sees the pain and the suffering. He paid the price for all of it. He wants the end to be so much better than what you imagined. He wants it to be all of that and more. He is there, I know he knows how you feel and wants to give you all the joy and comfort.

Remember he is the reason for the season his love is endless and he knows the end.