Is Christmas feeling melancholic this year? You're not alone

I often imagine what it would be like to be one of those shiny Christian women who wake up at 5 a.m., light a candle, journal for two hours, and run a small but thriving home-based apothecary before breakfast. Meanwhile, I’m over here celebrating small wins like, “I remembered to switch the laundry over before it got mildewy,” and “Only one of the cats scratched the couch today, praise God from whom all blessings flow.” If there’s a biblical womanhood rubric somewhere, I am definitely scoring points in the “creative interpretation” category.

I am 42, and let’s just face it — I am still struggling, struggling with rejection after years of battle, struggling to understand where I belong and who my people are, and struggling to make sense of why the cost of telling the truth so often seems to be loneliness. I feel like someone who has survived a long war only to realize there’s no homecoming parade. My house reflects the internal upheaval. It looks like a version of Hoarders Lite, not dangerous or unsanitary, simply cluttered and chaotic, a visible sign of the exhaustion and disorientation running underneath the surface of my days. Most of the time I dread an unexpected knock at the door because it feels like an invitation for people to witness the interior mess I have worked so hard to hide.

This Christmas season has brought all of that into sharper focus. My husband is working 12-hour shifts on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, my daughter (who was born on Christmas Day) will be with her father, my longtime therapist retired this month, and my perimenopausal hormones have surged at the exact moment old childhood trauma has been stirred up within the broader family system. The fears I thought were laid to rest, including the terror that my abuser will kill himself and that somehow the blame will land on me, have returned with a force I did not expect.

None of this resembles the picture-perfect Christmas that so many influencer mothers display online, complete with color-coded schedules and the minute-by-minute itinerary of a biblical woman prepared for the holiday season.

But influencer culture only offers templates; Jesus offers presence. They offer performance; Jesus offers Himself. And it is strangely comforting to remember that He did not enter a curated life; He entered sweat and blood and animal breath. He arrived in a feeding trough and chose a route into humanity that was anything but tidy.

There is still a part of me that feels pressure to present myself with more polish than I possess, as if readers will only trust my work if I speak from a place of strength and resolve. I can, in certain contexts, stand firm and resolute. When confronting abusive men, I do not waver. I can name patterns, resist manipulation, and defend the dignity of God’s daughters with clarity and confidence.

But this season has stripped away the illusion that I am always that version of myself. I do not feel like a champion returning from battle with trophies. I feel like a soldier standing before a line of ogres with a sword that is trembling in her hands. I am still fighting, but I do not feel steady, and perhaps this is exactly the position in which Jesus does His best work.

My therapist, Dr. Dan Allender, said it so beautifully:

“Paul calls leaders not merely to be humble and self-effacing but to be desperate and honest. It is not enough to be self-revealing, authentic, and transparent. Our calling goes far beyond that. We are called to be reluctant, limping, chief-sinner leaders, and even more, to be stories. The word that Paul uses is that a leader is to be an ‘example,’ but what that implies is more than a figure on a flannel board. He calls us to be a living portrayal of the very Gospel we beseech others to believe. And that requires a leader to see himself as being equally prone to deceive as he is to tell the truth, to manipulate as he is to bless, to cower as he is to be bold. A leader is both a hero and a fool, a saint and a felon.”

Those are the kinds of people Jesus called. Those are the kinds of people He trusted with His story. Those are the kinds of people He still uses to reveal Himself. My is that a relief! He can use me today while my house is still a mess. He can use me today when I still doubt.

God picked limpers. He picked misfits. He picked people hiding behind locked doors, shaking hands, broken families, complicated stories, and barely-held-together faith. He picked people like me. People like you.

So today I am resisting the temptation to pretend to have everything together. I won’t curate the image of a life I don’t live. I won’t pretend my Christmas is serene when it feels a bit melancholy. Because (and this is a self-preach here) the point of my story isn’t to prove my strength; it’s to point to His. If there are breadcrumbs in my mess, they’re not breadcrumbs of my wisdom or clarity. They’re breadcrumbs He drops. Breadcrumbs that lead not to me, but to Him. Breadcrumbs that whisper, “Even here, especially here, I am with you.”

Lord, bless this mess.

Originally published on Honest to Goodness.