Preparing Hurting Hearts for Christmas
We were facing a smile-less Christmas.
Only a few months before, life had imploded for our family in a way we never saw coming. I had gone to bed happily married and woken up a widow and single mom to seven kids. Overnight, life had shattered into a thousand pieces that would never be the same again.
Each morning for months, it had taken every ounce of hope I had to pull back the covers and put my feet to the floor and every bit of mental space and physical stamina not only to navigate my own grief, but to shepherd my children through theirs. On top of that I’d been juggling an endless to-do list of estate work and finances, single parenting and decisions, taxiing kids and managing all the home stuff that had once been shouldered by two.
I was reeling from the losses and emotions of a life I hadn’t expected and now—Christmas was coming. As much as I longed to create a happy Christmas for my kids, I couldn’t imagine pulling together any kind of real celebration. Our life seemed completely out of step from the shopping and parties, baking and merrymaking the rest of the world was engaged in.
And our own Christmas traditions felt much too tender this year. Maybe we’d come back to them later, but I wasn’t ready to do even simple things that had become the rhythm of Christmas for our family with the gaping absence of my husband. But I wanted to be present with my kids and we needed more than to simply survive Christmas. We needed to move forward with the hard work of healing, to find our footing in this unwanted chapter, and to let God begin to rebuild our family and shattered hearts.
How do you prepare broken hearts for Christmas?
No chapter in the mothering book tells you how to give your children the world when theirs feels so crushed. And while I couldn’t fix my children’s hurting hearts, I could point them to Jesus. We needed to intentionally turn our eyes from the pain of our circumstances and dwell on the hope of Jesus. We needed to lift our broken hearts to worship and adore the One broken for us.
As November came to a close, I began to study the passages surrounding Jesus’ birth and to see the hope of Christmas with fresh eyes. As a single mom and widow, I felt so vulnerable and yet, God had chosen to share in that vulnerability. The King of Kings had chosen to come as a helpless newborn—Jesus, the One who holds together all things, was held by his mother.[1]
I began to marvel anew that God so lavishly loves that he sent his only Son to a hurting world. A world that overlooked his birth, refused his gift, despised his ministry, betrayed his friendship, and he still chose the cross.[2] As I thought about navigating my children through that first Christmas, I opened the word and began to write out a new tradition for our family, one that would keep us focused on the true meaning of Christmas and our only hope through the gospel.
Each night we gathered as a family, reading first from the Old Testament prophecies that told of a coming Messiah and later the New Testament passages that told of his birth. We matched each Advent passage to one piece in our nativity set and spent our December unwrapping the story of Jesus’ birth and the gospel as we assembled our manger scene one piece at a time. Each night, lifting our eyes to the wonder and worship of Jesus brought hope in the midst of our ache.
How do you prepare broken hearts for Christmas?
It turns out, broken hearts prepare for Christmas the same way all hearts do. Preparing for Christmas means turning from the aches and worries and weariness of this world to focus on the One who came to be with us in it and save us from it.
The hard work of healing a broken heart won’t happen just because a few more Christmases pass by. We won’t find joy again by stuffing our pain and jumping into the decorating and decking and festivity. We can’t buy our way out of a painful Christmas, and we can’t gloss over it with empty platitudes. Broken hearts can only begin to heal when we look up at the One who came to make us whole.
Even when life doesn’t look like we wanted it to—especially when life doesn’t look like we want it to—we can celebrate Christmas because we have a Messiah who came into this messy world to suffer on our behalf and secure the gift of eternal life.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
[1] Colossians 1:17; Luke 2:7
[2] Luke 2:7; Luke 17:25; Luke 22:21; 1 Peter 2:24
