I have been here before.
Wrapped up in the glow of little twinkly lights. Snuggled under something soft and comforting. Leaning into the quiet with my eyes slightly closed and my heart’s door cracked gently open.
Yes, I have been here before.
Caught in the twisting of loss. The loss of someone I love or the someone I used to be. And in a breath, it all comes back...
A baby’s heartbeat. A daddy’s laughter. A body’s incandescent strength.
Gone and yet…
I have been here before.
Tucked quietly in a place where the light bends low. Beneath the glittering angels and the homemade so-and-so’s and the story that each branch keeps. It is a place that stretches and grows and rips at the soul.
Dancing slowly with time.
When a year is counted in all its bitter and sweet. When pieces of you are gone and your heart is forever changed. When the landscape of a calendar’s end is seen in all its retrospect.
When the days, even in all their twisting, speak of a light that has also bent high, bound in a brightness so bold and powerful it could conquer the darkness of night, strike fear into the shepherd’s heart, announce with overwhelming joy the birth of a tiny King.
It is a light that cannot be quelled no matter the depth of the darkness and fear surrounding it.
But sometimes the road is long, the body, tired and the world, without room.
And so the light must also bend low.
Finding us even when the journey has stripped us bare, creeping beneath the manger bed, searching through the straw and falling quietly on a mother’s hands as she wraps her babe in a funeral’s cloth, reminding the weary traveler’s heart that no matter the darkness that descends, the light will come.
Over and over and over again...
The. Light. Will. Come.
It will bend and stretch with the grace of a flickering candle into all the broken and tired and worn out places. It will seep and sow into the very depth of our bones a quiet and palpable joy. So that in every year’s reflection, a heart’s door can gently open and and it’s owner know…
His light will always come.
Originally Published in December 2015.