I’m writing these words on winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Tonight at my in-law’s house in North Carolina, the sun is predicted to set at 5:06 and remain mostly hidden until 7:24 AM when the refracting glimmers of fresh daylight will slowly disturb the darkness and usher in a new season of light-chasing.
Fleming Rutledge reflects that “Advent bids us take fearless inventory of the darkness: the darkness without and the darkness within.” Though Advent is nearly over (and I botched my ordering of the weekly themes—today’s was supposed to be love), it seems fitting, in a season of so much manufactured joy, to reflect on this elusive emotion during the darkest week of the year.
In her stunning book Rooted, Lyanda Lynn Haupt reflects on the paradox of darkness—a word often used metaphorically to reference evil and wickedness. But darkness is an essential component for life to thrive. Birds rely on both night and day for navigation. Trees depend on seasonal subtleties in preparation for dormancy, to awaken towards spring.
Haupt writes, “Darkness possesses its own essential grace. It is darkness that bears liminal imaginings more difficult to access in the scattered daylight. Darkness brings the restorative sleep and dreaming our bodies and psyches need. Darkness takes the harried busyness of the day and transforms it to stillness, to quiet. Darkness brings us starlight. Darkness erases our view of the horizon, forcing our reliance upon a spacious inner vision that daylight cannot provide. Darkness offers a complex refuge for all beings and all aspects of being.”
Joy Makes Space for Grief
A viral post from Heartland Funeral Home and Cremation Services made the rounds on social media this month with a stunning appeal for proper holiday host etiquette: “If you’re inviting someone to your home and they’re grieving, be sure you’re inviting their grief to attend too. It will be there anyway.” The writer of the post went on to say, “Don’t invite someone with the goal of cheering them up for the holidays. Don’t expect them to put on a happy face in your home. Don’t demand they fake it til they make it…”
I’ve looked at joy from so many sides. And the only honest way I can see it existing is with a whole fleet of other feelings. Because joy is not absent of anxiety. Or fear. Or grief. But neither are the hard feelings completely absent of hope. Or love. Or peace. Joy sits like a lump in the throat lodged between two tight shoulders. Joy travels to a stomach rolling with unsettledness. Joy is the promise of dawn after the longest night, the pinpricks of light disturbing a dark sky, a soft bed after a hard day’s work.
This year has been complex: hikes and hospital visits, happy news and depressive episodes, loneliness and connection, my father’s cancer diagnosis and his eventual remission (thank God). Joy’s been there all along like the darkness—offering intermittent starlight and refuge. Joy offers reprieve from sadness and despair. The kind of reprieve that conjures guilt until I remember life would be untenable if not for the bouts of beauty and goodness between the headlines and discouraging text updates.
In life, we’ll know joy alongside our pain, long for extended light while waiting in darkness. It’s helpful for me to imagine Mary’s humanity—not so much a perfect saint as an emotional, multitudinous woman whose soul magnified the Lord while her body tensed under the cultural ramifications of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
Mary consents to divine pregnancy, recites powerful words elevating the poor and the marginalized, and condemning the powerful. But a few verses later, she’s nearly rejected by her betrothed. We can only imagine what happened between the verses, the shame her society and family attempted to heap upon her, the physical pain and discomfort of childbearing and birthing so young. Mary embarks on a long journey while pregnant, through difficult terrain, arriving in a town so overbooked there’s no bed available for a body wracked by labor pangs.
I think about the worry Mary must have felt, the sorrow for lost relationships, the anger, even, at being misunderstood by a hometown that would condemn her condition. But I also think about the moment that Christ burst from her loins, when Joseph caught the baby, wrapped him snuggly, and placed him on Mary’s breast. In that moment, she must have known pure, rapturous joy, made all the more sacred alongside every other competing emotion she carried.
We may not all be grieving this Christmas, but we’re all adjacent to grief. We all have people in our midst who have lost or are losing. We all know people affected by illness and disease. We all know people warring within their minds. We all know people, and people come with their own sadness masked far too often by the smiles we require because smiles are easier to interact with than tears.
But this season, may we remember the depths we contain, the possibility for light and dark to coexist, for grief and joy to dwell. May our tables be spacious and safe places where we can be true to the conflicting feelings within and know that even in the hard times there is welcome. There is hope. There is peace. There is love. There is joy.
This final essay concludes this four-part advent series. If you missed the other guest essays, you can check them out below!
12/3: Hope by Rachel Marie Kang(The Black Letter)
12/10: Peace by
(The Empathy List)12/17: Love by
(Bitter Scroll)12/24: Joy by
(Wild + Waste)
Beautiful! Our joy and our grief are indeed intertwined. Loved what you said about the necessity of darkness!
Oh Sarah, my soul needed these words. Last night, my aunt left the Christmas get-together at her sister’s house, went home, and collapsed. She died of a massive heart attack. Our family is heartbroken, and I’m left trying to put together a holiday for my 3 year old who doesn’t understand why everyone is so sad. We all need the permission to grieve and rejoice, to know that Jesus is here, even in our heartbreak.