How to make this silent night a holy night where all is calm and all is bright?
For those of us living with grief in our life, the struggle is real. The dread of celebration is upon us. The time for merriment, joy, jingle bells, mistletoe, and good cheer is everywhere we look. I love Christmas, but the struggle to be cheerful is hard. The struggle to acknowledge our grief is even harder because society is so festive. We hide our grief because we don’t want to be the Grinch or the Party Pooper. So, what do we do? We hide behind a façade of happiness, cheerfulness and falala lala. In the privacy of our own homes, we yearn for our family to be complete. We want one more Christmas with our loved one. We want to watch our children grow one year older with each passing Christmas. We ache in our silent night.
To be holy is to be sacred. Our grief is sacred, holy, it is set apart for our respect and honor. We seek the lessons of grief as if it were a great teacher, teaching us deep truths of life. Grief brings us to the realization that we truly are not in control, life is a mystery, as is death. The holiness of grief is a reflection of the vastness of our love, that is indeed a reflection of the endless night. If we could only remember the comfort of that love, and experience the unconditional love that still exists. Grief asks us to remember what brought us together. Along with love will come grief and because we experience grief, we have known a deep profound love. In our silent night we come to our sacred space which is holy and deserving of our pause.
It is here in our sacred space where we can find the calm. The calm is in our memories. It is in the whisper of the voice that we still hear in our ear. It is in the memory of the laughter that we shared and cherished. The calm is in the hug that wrapped us in love. It is in the kiss that gently lands on our cheek. The calm is in the knowing that we loved deeply and fiercely. The calm is in the stillness where we sense the presence of our loved one. The calm is in the silent night, the sacred space where we can BE, without expectation and constraint.
It is in this holy night where we realize the profoundness of our grief. Can it be that when we experience the deepest darkness on earth, we begin to see the glimmer of all that is bright? When we are in the deepest darkest night imaginable, the tiniest of bright begins to illuminate life. We begin to appreciate more deeply the gift of breath and heartbeat. We begin to grasp what it means to be truly loved and to give love. We glimpse the richness of all that is sacred, the beauty that truly dwells within. Grief has invited us to feel our aliveness in ways we never knew existed. The small glimmer of brightness that we feel in the calmness of the silent holy night, might just be the peace that passes all understanding.
Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.
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