23/12/2024
❤️🩹To those who are struggling this Christmas🎄
❤️🩹This is for you, be greatly encouraged.
❤️🩹You are loved.
I just wanted these words to hopefully remind you of two things:
The first, is that you are not alone; that even though you’re uniquely suffering in the specific sadness you’re inhabiting right now—you are not suffering by yourself. The world is filled with people who are not exactly, but still deeply burdened, grieving, angry, hopeless, exhausted. Even if you never see their faces or know their names, rest in the truth that millions of wounded people stand in solidarity with you in this day—and that they get it. I get it.
The second thing I wanted to remind you of, is that though this is your painful story right now, it is not the end of your story.
The way you feel today will not always be the way you feel. As difficult as it is to imagine in these painful moments—there will be holidays when lightness returns to you; days when you are cultivating new dreams again, when you once more feel secured in a place where you belong, when you again find yourself embraced by people who see and treasure the goodness in you, days when you are easily pushing back your demons.
There will be holidays when celebration is your default setting.
But right now, don’t feel any guilt for the sadness within you.
Don’t beat yourself up for not wanting to sing right now.
Don’t feel pressured to have the s**t together that simply isn’t together and won’t be for a while.
Just receive this Christmas as it is, receive it as you are—with all the struggle and uncertainty and grieving it brings.
Be encouraged.
You are loved.
Source - John Pavlovitz🕺🏼