Hope for the Holidays

While this time of year is the brightest and best for many of us, there are many among us, who approach each holiday season from either a bitter-sweet perspective, or complete dread. If this is how you've felt, please know that you are far from alone. This holiday season is not limited to Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, anniversaries of losses, anniversaries of days that were once our banner days but now represent the death of a friendship, a career change, or harder still, the death of a marriage that we once celebrated with joy and hope. So what can be done about those moments?

1. Plan in advance that you'll feel grief and confusion, and do not fight it when the emotions come. How, you say, do you not fight something so painful and powerful? You embrace it. Ah, here is the confusion again. Here is the grief. Yes, this is understandable. Anyone who survived, experienced, endured or made the choices I have made would feel this way at a time like this. Fighting it makes it stronger, and you, weaker. Don't stuff, don't pretend. Embrace.

2. Make an appointment with me, or your own coach to work through those emotions and plan for how to overcome the feelings with action-oriented behaviors that will heal and bring hope. Plan that you'll need extra support, perhaps extra sleep, extra understanding, a bit more pampering or even more exercise, hydration, better supplements, a massage or change of scenery, and most likely, almost always likely, you will NEED to find opportunities to serve others. Yes, serving others will bring us outside of ourselves on the darkest days. It's scriptural! Find a way to plug in and serve and help someone who needs you. Needs are everywhere we look, because people are everywhere. This reminds us that we're not the only one struggling and that we have been so blessed that we have much to give back.

3. Choose to compartmentalize where you need to. If those strong feelings come while leading a meeting, that's not helpful to anyone. Make a decision to embrace the grief, disappointment, sadness, and pray, and let the Lord know, you'll set an appointment to work through the grief either alone for a short period of time when you are either with your trusted coach, a healthy, supportive Christian friend or family member or partner, or, if necessary, when you're alone to process with the Lord prayerfully.

4. It's okay to cry, vent, write it out in a journal, feel the feelings, log prayer requests through tears, confess your exhaustion and weariness and disappointment. When the minutes you've appointed for that grieving are over, do something positive for yourself and move on for the time being. Make a deal with yourself and the Lord that you'll end your journaling or venting by remembering the faithfulness of God, counting at least ten blessings, and keep going if you can count more, even in your pain!

5. Choose to tell yourself something that you're proud of yourself for. This is not about bragging or idealizing or pride, this is about choosing to focus on the good things that area happening now and what you're choosing for yourself. We steer where we stare.

6. Celebrate wins, give thanks to God and praise to God always. It's a sacrifice when we're not feeling like doing so, and it's always for our ultimate good, our hearts change when we do!

I know that hope for the holidays ahead is yours in Christ, even if it doesn't feel like it in your emotions. I know this because I have the Word of God to tell me Who you are and Whose you are. Remember that our fleeting emotions are not WHO we are. We are in Christ. Feelings will come and go, and we are His children, held in the palm of His hand, no matter what feelings we are feeling moment by moment. You are worthy, blessed and capable of doing everything God has designed for You, for His good plan to bless you and work in and through you!