This too shall pass (Pulling though tragedy)

Are you having a hard Christmas? Have you recently lost a loved one, lost a job, or going through a hard season and can’t find your joy or cheer? Do you know someone who is struggling this holiday season because of a loss or other tragedy and want to understand what they are going through and help. Don’t lose heart. This is a story of how my children and I suffered great loss and have moved through to find happiness and joy once more.

This is the first Christmas in three years that we have hung up our Christmas cards. Let me first start by telling you the significance of hanging Christmas cards. My entire life, at Christmas time, it was tradition to hang all of the Christmas cards that we received on all sides of our kitchen doorway. It was a wonderful feeling to know each time I walked through that doorway, all of those people were thinking about us that holiday season. This tradition has carried to my family with my children. When we get a holiday card in the mail, the kids love to open them and be the one to hang it in the doorway.

The past five years have been very difficult for our family. The last three being the hardest. We suffered two major losses in the span of just 2 years. I lost my father very suddenly. Philip, my life partner and my children’s Dad, passed away after a long hard fight against cancer. Needless to say, cheer here was hard to find and joy was even more difficult. We still tried although for me it was more like going through the motions to ensure the kids had a happy Christmas.

During that time, we decorated our Christmas tree, hung the stockings, put out the countdown calendars, ate the advent chocolates, everything we had done in the past except I just could not hang up the Christmas cards. One by one we pulled them out of the mailbox and we opened them. After we opened them, they went into the garbage. Now first let me tell you, especially if you send us Christmas cards every year, we appreciated them very much. They made of feel loved and we knew we were being thought of. It warmed our hearts. The hard part and the reason they went into the garbage was because they were photos, they were photos of people smiling with joy and happiness. They were photos of families with their arms around each other. They represented whole families, happy families. The hardest part was looking at the smiles when we could not find ours. Our hearts yearned to feel whole enough to smile to feel joy and happiness. Those Christmas cards represented things that we could not feel at the time and brought great sadness.

This year is different. Through God’s grace and time to heal, the cards are back on the doorway. We eagerly look through the mail each day, for Christmas cards from family and friends excited to hang them and walk through them knowing how loved we are. We have found our smiles again. Our joy and happiness has returned. Though are hearts still yearn for the loved ones we have lost, the pain is not as hard. Where pain and sadness was so abundant and raw, love and healing have now taken its place.

This Christmas, if you can’t find your smile, if sadness and pain are all you can see, your world has been turned upside-down by loss or tragedy, please know that you won’t always feel this way. Healing will come. Each day brings a bit of healing. It may come so slow that you don’t notice it, but one day, you will wakeup and you will realize that the pain that you once felt so sharp and debilitating doesn’t hurt quite so much; and overtime the sharp pain will become dull. Eventually sometimes without even seeing the change, the sadness and pain once consumed has been replaced by a scar. This scar represents healing. Now, you look at that scar (the loss, the tragedy) and the pain is gone. In its place are the memories. The good memories before the pain and suffering, but also the ones that caused so much pain and sadness except they don’t carry the same weight as they once did. The pain isn’t sharp and one day even the sadness will fall away being replaced with gratefulness for the time you did have with your loved one, and for the amazing peoples who helped you through when it felt like your world came crashing down and all you could see was darkness. I Promise you, one day you will find your smile, when you look back on this, the sadness will feel far away and the sharp pain will be no more. Just like every cut or break our physical body feels, the pain lessens and heals. The scars remind us of what we have been through and are a wonderful way to bring hope to someone else that is experiencing tragedy and or loss. These seasons and hardships are what build us into the strong enduring people that we grow to become through life.

If you know someone who can’t find their smile because of tragedy or loss, know that you being there for the small things, like sending the Christmas cards even if they do throw it away is important. They need you to be their even if you don’t know what to say. Just show up, knowing that they are loved and they are not alone means everything.

We can’t hurry a heart to heal or a season to pass, but we can walk beside each other until it happens. May God bless and guide you through your journey of healing and use it to helps others.