12/20/2025
Six years ago, I heard Amy Grant and Vince Gill in concert. It was jubilant and nostalgic and good and hard and wonderful and bittersweet all at once. That's what Christmas is, honestly. A mix of emotions.
My grandfather died the day before Christmas twenty years ago.
I remember getting the phone call and staring out the window at the snow falling. It was the type of snow with the fluffy flakes that don't melt instantly. Movie snow, I like to call it. It was supposed to be magical, and somehow in that moment of grief there was this strange moment of peace.
The first year of my divorce I was alone on Christmas.
I remember sitting in my house with the tree lights twinkling and watching The Devil Wears Prada on my kindle. I cried at parts I shouldn't have, honestly. It was my heart trying to figure things out, trying to beat through loss, trying to find joy in sitting there, alone.
Sometimes you don't know the story of someone else.
Today at Target the cashier kept telling everyone she was pregnant. She wore her red top and patted her belly and when it was my turn I said, "how are you?" And in that moment, in the midst of carts bursting with Nerf Guns and Legos and Shopkins she looked at me with tears. "It's okay, it's hard, sometimes it's so hard."
Eight years ago I had surgery on my ankle on December 19.
It wasn't what I wanted. I couldn't walk up my stairs so I would crawl hauling the heaviest cast ever. The kids had all these expectations, these hopes and I was just in pain, immobile and feeling alone as the words about it being "the most wonderful time of the year" filled my house. Irony.
Five years ago there was covid and Christmas without family and unknowns and loss.
We zoom called and sent packages and tried so hard and made memories that I never would have ever expected. It was grief and joy all mixed together.
That's the holidays, honestly.
On the outside it can look so wonderful, so Hallmark, so beautiful. And yet, on the inside, on the other side, there are all of these stories.
Stories of the first Christmas alone.
Stories of struggling to make ends meet.
Stories of loving those but resentment sent back.
Stories of illness and unexpected.
Stories of goodbyes and see you laters.
Stories of trying so very very hard and not feeling as if you’re gaining ground.
Stories.
And sometimes the holidays can be heavy, hard. Almost as if there is this added layer of expectations to have it together and when we don’t it adds this layer of “am I the only one?”
You are not the only one.
You are not the only one.
You are not the only one.
We are in this journey together.
We may not articulate it well and we forget so many times, and yet there are moments where the rawness and real parts of all of us become apparent.
We love.
We love so deeply that when we have these moments the missing pieces in our story now become apparent. Maybe that's why while during that concert I saw so many with tears in their eyes.
Tears of remembering.
Tears of release.
Tears of expecatations.
Tears of hope.
Tears of joy.
Tears of loss.
Tears of being together.
Tears of life.
So to all of you, simply grace.
I know it can be hard. I know your heart feels. I know that sometimes the story isn't one you wanted to walk.
I want you to know you are important, even if everything is messy.
I want you to know that sometimes the messiest places produce the most beautiful and simplest memories.
I see you. You are not alone.
~Rachel
