The darkness of December.

Christmas lights everywhere.  Shimmering.  Glittering.  Sparkling with glee.

I cannot help but enjoy this season, to laugh with my children, to be blessed by the festivities, to get caught up in the contagious excitement of the season... And yet, behind my smile lies a deep heaviness. I am aware of the two worlds I am trying to juggle... The world of my broken, traumatized heart and the world of engaging with the present.

How are you? people ask.  Are you spending Christmas in Moncton? they ask.  How are the girls doing? and When can you come for dinner?

I answer these questions with limited cognitive awareness of what I am actually saying.  Sometimes, I stare straight ahead dumbfounded, completely unable to put my heart and life into words that touch my lips...

Sometimes, in conversation, when people are free to say whatever's on their mind... I find myself wavering...  My mind gets taken up into a world of trauma and brokenness.  I see the person in front of me talking, but cannot take in what they are saying.  All I hear is the echo of emptiness in the big dark cloud that follows me wherever I go, where my husband used to take up residence... The part of me that was him, one with him... just empty.  In that hollow space, my singular thoughts echo loudly... repeating over and over, My husband died.  He died.  Sometimes it says, Lynn would be doing this.  Lynn would be saying that.  Where is Lynn's contribution in this conversation?

How can the world just go on?  How can people ask me how I am doing or what my plans are?  How can I sit and discuss trivial things that have no bearing on my life?  How is any of this real?  I do not want to be self-absorbed, and yet I want to scream... Lynn is gone!  I find myself feeling isolated in a terrible grief while I watch the rest of the world move forward...  I've been there, people say.  Sometimes it's death, sometimes divorce... But you haven't.  You haven't been here.  My loss is unique, as is yours.

There are so many others grieving.  I have friends and loved ones. We are all grieving with Newtown, Conn.  Yet, my heart is so heavy-laden, pierced with the realities of my own grief, that I can barely manage to go there, emotionally, to grieve with others, to mourn the loss and the wickedness of our humanity...

My mind and heart are swallowed up in the simple fact that I am alone.  My husband is no more.  It's Christmas time.  And in two days, it is our 9th anniversary.  My husband died, and the world moves on...

I have suppressed my world of personal brokenness and trauma for many days now... I have engaged as best as I can in the present with the people around me... But now the menacing black cloud of grief is rearing its ugly head, rising again to the surface, expanding and taking over, laying me flat on my back and sapping me of my strength...  

It is the darkness of December, this wretched month, in which the light of the world descends, resides, and impacts... Be born in me, my Jesus.  Fill me anew.  Take up residence in the humble scene of my sorrowful heart...