We need the light of Christmas to shine into our New Year.

Loss and grief are painful. Words to describe them are inadequate and reasons to feel them are plentiful!

When they force their way into our lives there is a mixture of dark thoughts and feelings that cannot be ignored. Always bad, this pain is multiplied as we face a New Year. Sometimes we wonder how we will survive.   Almost always our lives are changed so radically that we feel like a stranger in our own life and doubt we will ever be happy again.

All the while we long for hope, joy, peace and love and wonder if we will ever truly experience any of them.

We know it is foolish to hope that nothing bad will happen in the new year and that it is unhealthy to deny the losses that have already changed our lives.

Terrorism struck within a couple hours of this New Year. The L.A. firestorm consumes homes and lives with an appetite that cannot be satisfied. Pains are still fresh from recent losses. Old losses, ungrieved, have become chronic pain that produce misunderstood physical, mental, emotional and spiritual challenges. These losses are close to home, in our country and our lives. The losses globally are beyond measure.

So what are we to do?

The answer begins to come in this quote by my grief mentor, Karen Schoenhals. Karen worked as a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner and experienced traumatic loss in her own life.

"To successfully grieve, not sinking into bitterness and despair, is to allow room in our hearts for both joy and sorrow to exist, to be experienced simultaneously, and to be openly acknowledged together. And the beauty of Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us, who lost everything when He came into this dark world to save us--to walk with us through our dark path of grief and give us joy."

What if we began our new year by counting our losses instead of making New Year resolutions?

At first it sounds so negative. Who wants to go there? No one!

But what it we could experience God in a new and powerful way when He feels closer than ever before, where He sheds His light in the darkest places of our lives and provides a comfort and healing that only He can give?

What if 2025 was the year when the wounds, losses and traumas of our past could be faced in a way that helped us live with hope, joy, peace and love. What if instead of asking, "Why does God allow suffering," we asked, "Where is he in our suffering?"

Grieving is identifying our loss and the pain that accompanies it. The we express the loss and pain we have identified. There is a three minute video, on the Best Care Ministry website (www.bestcareministry.com -- scroll to the bottom of the home page) that explains how we can do this with another person and/or with God in the "other chair."  This is how you get through through the pain. It is hard work. But a miracle happens when you grieve. The pain does not go away, but your heart grows and makes room for loss and joy to live in the same life. This not the denial of loss nor its pain. Nor is it to look on the bright side. But we learn there is a place and room in our heart for both.

What if we find God in the suffering? What if our experience of God is so profound that our experience with God, who is close to the brokenhearted, helps us live and move forward through the hardship and grief of our loss. Life will be different. We will change. Our understanding of God and his love and care will transcend our circumstances. Eventually, we will live a truer life, with a bigger soul, a stronger love and a richer experience with God.

A weary world and your grieving soul will be able to rejoice, and hope, and love and experience peace.

Leave a comment or email me -- dan@bestcareministry.com. Together we can help each other and our world find the care that it desperately needs.