There’s More To It Than That | 4 Ways to Navigate Grief During the Holidays

One annoying thing in life is receiving a simple solution to a complicated problem when someone makes something seem so much simpler than it really is.

The truth is many things in life are simple. If you want to lose weight, you just need to eat fewer calories than you burn. If you want to have money to spend, you simply need to spend less than you earn. It's simple, right? But to be told such things belies the fact that these can be complicated challenges. If it were easy to lose weight, then everyone would do it. If it were easy to budget well, then, of course, everyone would do it.

Sometimes, there is more to it than that. Yes, it should be easy, but listen, there's more to it than that.

“but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” 2 Timothy 1:10

I'll never forget reading that verse—not for the first time, because I had read through the Bible before—but it felt like the first time. It was in the fall of 2012. It was like a bolt of lightning hit me, and I texted it to my wife, saying, "This verse is amazing! In fact, we should put it on our Christmas card." Of course, all of us have to pick a verse for the Christmas card that goes with the picture of our family we send out. I thought this should be the verse we put on our Christmas card. I don't even know why I thought that. It's an amazing verse, but it's not really super Christmasy. I mean, how often do we put the word "death" on a Christmas card? But I thought it was incredible that Jesus would destroy death. What an amazing thought!

The wild part is Jennie, my wife, said she had read that verse that morning and had written down in her journal that we should put that verse on our Christmas card, celebrating the God who sent his Son Jesus into this world to destroy death.

So we did. We put that verse on our Christmas card that year, which went out to all our friends, family, and coworkers, celebrating in 2012 the Savior who destroyed death. However, there was a problem with the printing press, and it ended up being late. Instead of arriving 20 days, 15 days, or a couple of weeks before Christmas, it arrived in people's mailboxes exactly five days before Christmas, give or take a day, depending on where you lived in the country.

On that exact day, while our friends were reading about how great it is that death has been destroyed, we were experiencing the viciousness of death in our immediate family in a way we never could have imagined.

It was five days before Christmas in 2012 that our daughter Lenya suffered from an asthma attack. She, like me, had asthma that would come randomly. You'd just have to give her the medicine, and then she’d breathe better. That was Lenya.

But this attack was much different. She took the medicine, but it didn't make a difference. Soon, there was a cardiac event unfolding in real-time in front of us, with no chance to do anything about it except pray, do CPR, and call the paramedics. Lenya went home to be with Jesus that Christmas. Just five days before celebrating the most wonderful time of the year, we were plunged into the darkness, chaos, and reality of death.

What were we to take confidence in? Of course, what gave us comfort was the truth that Jesus had destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Nothing beyond that gave us any measure of hope or courage. No platitude, no "Look up," no encouraging thought of, "It's going to be okay." It was just the fact that death specifically had been destroyed.

Even though my wife and I laughed about the fact that that verse didn't feel Christmassy, the truth is Christmas has everything to do with death. In fact, Hebrews 2:15 says the reason Jesus came to this world was to release those who, through fear of death, were all their lifetimes subject to bondage. The purpose of Christmas, the reason for the season—we love to say that—is literally death. He came to destroy death. He went about doing so with the most unlikely battle strategy ever: he would die. It doesn't make sense, really, if you think about it. How can you destroy something by participating in it? Jesus destroyed death by allowing himself to die.

It’s interesting that trees are central to how we celebrate Christmas. Death came because of a tree in Genesis 3 (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Adam and Eve ate from), and Jesus came to solve that problem by allowing himself to be crucified on a tree.

The Bible says in Revelation that in heaven, in the paradise of God, there's a tree of life that brings healing and joy. It's a picture of the reality of life where there is no more death. So we sit between those trees, looking back to what was taken, looking to the cross where the price was paid for our sins, and looking forward with longing and hope to the reality of heaven, where we will once again live in a place without sorrow, disease, death, or goodbyes.

What I want to encourage you with this Christmas is that just because those things are true, that death has been defeated and Jesus is coming again to redeem and restore, it doesn't mean that experiencing death isn't sad. It doesn't mean that facing grief, loss, or sorrow isn't hard. I knew the facts of the gospel when my daughter Lenya went home to be with Jesus, but that doesn't mean I didn't hurt. That doesn't mean I didn't grieve. I relate to those of you who feel deep sorrow, sadness, and pain. If you write things down in church, you should write this down: Hurting with hope still hurts.

It doesn't mean you don't have faith if you feel sad this Christmas. If you feel sorrow, if you feel pain, that's okay. Jesus himself related to grief and sadness by crying, being sad, and expressing physical emotion. In John 11, we're told that at the grave of his friend Lazarus, it's the shortest verse in the English Bible, but it's perhaps the most profound: John 11:35—Jesus wept. He was sad. He was sorrowful. Even though he knew Lazarus was about to get out of the grave, he still felt those effects in his humanity. And he doesn't expect you to do any better than he did facing sadness, facing grief, facing loss.

I'll never forget the Christmas after Lenya went to heaven in 2013 when they began to bring out the Christmas-themed cups at the coffee shops, and we began to sense the trappings of Christmas going up in our community. I felt this incredible sense of panic, a profound sense of anxiousness, because I thought, "Oh my gosh, this has now become forever tainted. The reality of Christmas, death, and what we've lost are all entangled forever." There were literally already gifts under the tree with Lenya's name on it when she was lying there in the funeral home. The day her body was being laid to rest was the day after Christmas. It was all so entangled. We had to open up those gifts and set them to the side. There was a great sadness to it.

God doesn't want you to pretend like the pain isn't true. You can still have faith, even with tears running down your cheeks. You can still believe it, even when it hurts like crazy. But I want to give you four things that I think will be helpful to you as you navigate grief with belief.

Be Patient.
Be patient, especially if the grief is new, especially if it's the first year. The first Mother's Day, the first Thanksgiving, and the first Fourth of July is a gauntlet. And Christmas especially can be incredibly, incredibly difficult to navigate. I want you to be patient with yourself. The truth is this will always be as heavy as it is. It will never get lighter, but the good news is, in time, you will become stronger. And so, the same weight that feels just as heavy will actually feel lighter in time because you've gotten stronger. But that takes time, so be patient with yourself. Don't expect yourself to be further along than you are. Know that God's not rushing you through.

Stick together.
It is incredibly important that you don't try to navigate grief, loss, and this messy reality by yourself. Do so within the confines of relationships—hopefully, people who encourage your faith and are praying for you. I can't think of a better place to get that than a small group or inside the local church.

Run towards the roar.
When you feel like running away from something, at times, the way to courage and the way to joy is to run towards it. Don't skip Christmas this year! I remember that feeling distinctly of not wanting to put lights up and not wanting to put the tree up. It just felt like a reminder of what was taken away. But I felt like the Holy Spirit put something inside of me when he spoke to me, "There's no way to live like that." Christmas cannot be for us just a reminder of our pain but instead of his power–Christmas is when Jesus came to turn off the darkness of death.

I remember telling Jennie this revelation, and she was fully on board. Together, we decided that instead of running from decoration, let's put up more decorations. Let's go all out. Let's not just wait till it's gone. Let's not pretend that it's something that we no longer can enjoy.

Run toward that roar with your eyes on the resurrection, with your eyes on heaven, with your eyes on the prize. It will be hard, and that's okay. Give yourself grace. Do the scary things. Once you've done them, they'll get easier and easier, and with time, they will actually become a comfort to you.

Be a good steward.
Be a good steward of your pain. Be a good steward of your grief. Be a good steward of your loss. Believe it or not, it is an honor to be trusted with suffering. It's a grace to be allowed to go through pain.

I want to end with a story. Jennie and I's youngest son, Lennox, at the time of writing this, is five years old. More specifically, he's five years, three months, and 12 days old, exactly today. It’s the 12th day, the third month, the fifth year that we've had him in this world. As I was preparing this content, my wife sent me a text. She said, "Levi, today is exactly the day in Lennox's life, where in Lenya's life, she went home to be with Jesus." And I'll be honest, it hit me like a truck. It hit me like a heavy weight to look at Lennox and have a vivid picture of how old Lenya went home to be with Jesus all those years ago.

The first thing I thought of was something he said to me last night when I was putting him to bed. I was reading the Christmas story to him, and I had gotten to the part where the angels announced to the shepherds the birth of Jesus, and that was where I thought the chapter ended. So I went to close the book and sneak out of his room. He was pretty sleepy, but his hand shot out, and he said, "Dad, wait! There's more to it than that! That's not how this story ends!" He was right; I had missed one page because they had stuck together. There was the page where the shepherds went to see baby Jesus and then left with great joy.

I couldn't help but think about how there's more to it than that with Christmas. There's more to the holiday than what meets the eye. If twinkle lights, warm fires, and hot cocoa are all there is to it, then it is going to be sad forever. If baby Jesus didn't grow up and conquer death, we would be trapped in this hopelessness. But because he did, and because he conquered death and the grave, this is not how the story ends.

There's more to it than that. With our pain, grief, and sorrow, we can bring those things to Jesus, who conquered death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

His story didn't end in his death, but in life, and He offers that life to you to walk in, too.