Heartache and Hope
This time of year can be hard for many reasons. 2020 has been a year filled with sorrow, disappointment, and loss for everyone. How do you navigate sorrow, disappointment, and loss in this pandemic world? How do you care for your heart when expectations have not come through and loss has been your experience? Each of us has suffered heartache this year. How do you lovingly care for and name them specifically? Loss of life, isolation, freedoms, health, community, jobs, relationships, uncertainty, and the list goes on. Many are on low reserves or none at all. What is a heart to do? We are all bleeding from 1000 cuts. Much of the time, human tendency to power through takes over. After all, what else can we do? We have to carry on, right?
May I suggest a different approach this advent season. Without comparing or minimizing, acknowledge your sorrows, disappointment, and losses. Do not just push through. Be curious. Open your heart to the uncomfortable. It would be a gift to your heart to admit and name specifically the sorrows, disappointments, and losses of 2020. Your heart and body already carry these. Specifically naming allows the emotional impact on your heart to lessen.
Allow yourself to grieve without going to a solution immediately. When our first response is the solution, grief becomes something to get over quickly. What is it that you can name? Where are you? Sit with yourself. Listen to your body and gut response. As you are honest in your grieving, ask God to meet you in it. Be curious.
Where is your hope? Who is it in? Have you ever thought about this? What do you do with the discrepancy of genuine heartache and receiving the Christmas hope of Jesus…the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace this advent season? We can have hope. We can have Peace. This season does not have to be pushed through…it can be peace filled and beautiful in the sorrow, disappointment, and loss as you trust in the hope of Jesus…his birth and his future return.
Merry Christmas to you! May you experience the Love that passes understanding!
-Cynthia Morris
https://surehopecounseling.com/cynthia-morris-trauma-child-abuse/
