One gift of the last several years of my learning to hold both the beauty and the brokenness, the light and the dark, the faith and the doubt–all in one hand, is the knowing that Christmas, just like everything else in life, doesn’t have to be bruised forever by my own sorrow. It’s never one or the other, it’s always both. We are never asked to either celebrate or get off the Christmas train, though it may feel like that in our shiny-positive, instagram-curated culture. 

 

The truth is that the Christmas story actually can hold all of it. There is a brokenness there in the giving of a child to humanity, the future knowledge of that child’s own suffering. There is a sorrow in the dirt and chill of his birth in a barn: his mother’s fear, his father’s angst. 

 

On this Christmas Eve whatever you’ve lost this year, whatever you’re losing. Whatever you’re holding tight to. Whatever you’re celebrating. This is a reminder that Christmas is a both/and. God has made Godself known, through the coming of human child. God is here among us, in our broken spaces and our joy. In our hunger and our feasting. In the darkness, and in the light that shines.

 

• Find "You Took Your Own Heart" by The Brilliance on Spotify.  
• "Both can be true," is a phrase I learned from Cara Meredith. Find her here and here.
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• Micha's other podcast, The Lucky Few, is all about Down syndrome advocacy. She cohosts it with Heather Avis and Mercedes Lara.
• Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer is available everywhere books are sold