Blessed Are Those Who Are Just Trying to Hold it Together

This blessing is for the time you left yourself behind,

but this is not a farewell.

This is a poem that remembers:

when the body aches and the calendar screams,

the flame is still lit.

This is for those still finding one another—

again, again, again—

in the soft light of a long year’s close.

Blessed are you with tears on your cheeks,

trying to hold joy and work and money and kids and God

all at the same time.

Blessed are you who are tired of performing Christmas,

who just want to sit by the fire, under a blanket,

and remember:

you are a person.

Not a producer of joy.

Just a person.

I wanted to write you a joy poem,

but maybe what you need is permission:

You don’t have to write Joy into every line.

You don’t have to make it perfect.

You don’t have to answer every expectation.

This is what Advent teaches us:

Joy rises anyway.

Even when the veil is thin.

Even when we’re missing someone.

Even when love bends like light through winter fog.

Joy is not naïve. Joy is defiant.

Joy crosses back and forth

between this world and the hushed place where the heart longs.

So lean here.

Let the Holy One hold you without an agenda.

Let Joy take your hand in the middle of the budget spreadsheet

and whisper:

You can still be kissed in the dark.

You are not alone.

The flame is still lit.

And Christmas comes anyway—

not because you made it happen,

but because Love keeps showing up.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you.