Cover credit – Freepik
This past weekend, I received an email from a friend serving the end of the third year on a twenty-year sentence in a maximum-security prison in Elmira, New York. While we write back and forth a few times a month. this was the first time he transparently started off the letter by saying, “Please keep me in prayer if you can. I just started feeling a little heavier this week knowing that the holidays are approaching. I’d rather just forget about them.”
While you most likely aren’t reading this while incarcerated, the human heart has much in common with its fellow man’s or woman’s. You may be feeling the same heaviness as my friend is experiencing this year. You may want to just skip over the holidays, the songs, the lights, and the laughter. Maybe your life’s circumstances have drastically changed since last year and not for the better. Maybe things are just the same as they were last year, yet you’d really hoped for a change. I’m writing this directly to you, who might be feeling heavier around the holidays.
As we speak, there are people whose children are receiving a cancer diagnosis, some in the early stages and others terminal. By the time Christmas arrives, they will be most likely well into their chemo treatments coupled up with hospital stays. Some will receive a serious enough diagnosis to have to fly to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and spend most of their Christmas listening to the constant beeping of machines. Without hair, without strength, and without much hope, the holidays will feel heavy this year.
Other readers or neighbors of ours have lost a spouse this past year. Some had their spouse for many years and habitually still reach over to their side of the bed each morning before remembering that they aren’t there. Others have lost their spouse of only a few short years, having to also bury many future dreams, hopes, and a life they had hoped for long with their spouse. The holidays bring back many memories, traditions, scents, and things most people would really enjoy together, but people in both of these situations most likely wish the holidays would just disappear this year and next year too.
Some people are fighting an addiction or helping a loved one to do the same. It’s caused severed relationships and extreme stress in your entire family this past year. I personally understand how completely drained you are. Others are spending their first holiday separated from family who moved back to their country of origin. My wife can understand and empathize with that unique struggle. Other people have recently lost their jobs and are facing the financial crisis of a lifetime for the holidays. Some have been in a financial crisis for years now with no visible light at the end of this dark tunnel. Someone else has received an unexpected, past medical bill that will ultimately affect the rest of their life. Gifts, meals of abundance, and the other holiday traditions are way out of the question this year. Others will be spending the holidays this year purchasing a newborn size grave blanket and laying it over a freshly dug grave. Another neighbor may only get one or two phone calls from their child serving a tour in the Middle East. How could their heart not be heavy?
Lord, we pray for those readers today that are, like my friend, feeling the weight of the holidays approaching. We lift up to you Jesus those who are depressed, stressed out, and feeling such a darkness that they themselves have been wanting to die. We pray for those who are contemplating suicide or even using patterns of unhealthy behaviors and habits to slowly take their own lives, even without realizing it. We ask, God, that You would lift that deep depression and replace it with an overwhelming sense of Your love and value for them and their lives. We ask that You would place a new hope into their hearts as You also place good friends or even compassionate strangers around them. Put people in their paths and lives that would help them, pray for them, selflessly serve them, and be a friend that brings a breath of fresh air for a new day. Thank you for loving us, Lord, and seeking us out even and especially in our darkest seasons of life. Thank you for a new hope this holiday season.
In Jesus name we pray,
Amen
