This week has felt heavier than most. Kayce has been so incredibly needy and clinging, and I’ve felt worn down in ways I wasn’t prepared for.
We were in a car accident on the Sunday before Christmas while my husband Patrick, our son Kayce, and I were on our way to church together. While we are deeply thankful we are physically okay, it looks like our family vehicle will most likely be totaled. It’s something we never planned for and certainly didn’t expect to be facing right now. We weren’t preparing to replace a vehicle for several more years, and the stress of that reality has quietly settled into everything since.
Immediately after the accident, Kayce looked at me with tears in his eyes, his lip quivering. Right there on the side of the highway, I prayed with him. We thanked God that we were safe, that He protected us, that we were still together. In that moment, before the adrenaline wore off and before the fear fully set in, there was Jesus. Protecting us. Covering us.
Since then, Kayce has struggled more than usual. I can be two feet away, and he panics.
The crying has felt nonstop. The fussing constant. He cried the entire way to church and half the way home another day until he finally passed out from exhaustion. Sleep has been broken. Naps are harder. Nights feel restless. And the toll of being needed every single second has been heavy in every way, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
This is not how he usually is.
Kayce is normally so good at independent play. He’s content. He can entertain himself. He feels secure. This week, that version of him feels far away, and I feel guilty even saying that out loud.
Kayce has been diagnosed with apraxia of speech, which means he often cannot communicate what he needs or how he’s feeling. I know that makes this even harder for him. When he cries, I don’t always know what he’s trying to tell me. When he clings, I don’t always know what reassurance he’s searching for. That helplessness adds another layer of strain for both of us.
Right alongside the exhaustion is frustration. And right behind the frustration is shame.
I want to soak in every extra moment. I know how fleeting childhood is. I know what it means to wish you had more time, more moments, more memories. And that makes it so hard to admit how draining this week has been. There are moments I feel exhausted in every sense of the word. I get exasperated with the constant crying, and then I am immediately hard on myself for feeling that way at all.
This is our first Christmas without Karson.
That reality sits underneath everything this season. It colors every moment, even the ones that look joyful on the outside. There is a child whose presents will never be wrapped, never opened, never torn into with excitement. A child whose place in our home exists only in memory and longing.
I often think about how hard it must be to be a parent with one child in heaven and one child on earth. I don’t know many harder roads than celebrating with one while quietly aching for the other to be in the room. Watching your child here open presents with pure joy, laughter spilling out, excitement written all over their face, while you are fighting back tears the entire time. Trying to stay present. Trying to be happy with them. Trying not to let the grief spill over and show the heaviness in your heart.
Grief doesn’t always look like falling apart. Sometimes it looks like holding yourself together for someone else.
You smile for the child you can hold while grieving the one you cannot. You choose joy on purpose, even when it costs you something.
This Christmas has been difficult for Patrick too. Grief doesn’t land the same way for everyone, but it still lands. We are both carrying the weight of loss while trying to show up, to lead our family, and to keep moving forward even when our hearts feel tired.
Not everyone who is grieving has the option to step away from Christmas entirely. Some of us still have children here. Some of us still show up, still decorate, still go to church, still open presents, even when our hearts are carrying something unbearably heavy.
If I’m honest, parts of this season have almost felt like an attack. We weren’t able to make it to our church Christmas program. We weren’t able to attend our church’s Christmas Eve service, though we were able to visit another church. And then, on the Sunday before Christmas, on our way to church, we were in the accident and couldn’t make it there either.
It felt like obstacle after obstacle, moment after moment, trying to keep us from gathering, from worshiping, from being in God’s presence. And yet, even in that, God still met us.
Every worship song makes me cry.
There are moments I can’t even sing along. It takes everything in me just to keep the tears from streaming down my face, to keep from fully breaking down and ugly crying right there in my chair. The words are true and beautiful, but they feel heavier now. They land deeper. They reach places that are still raw.
And yet, this is Christmas.
The birth of Jesus. The arrival of our Savior. The moment God stepped into our broken world in human form, not distant or detached, but present. While celebrating Christmas in a worldly sense feels hard this year, celebrating a Savior who came to earth so He could save us, who entered suffering, who knows grief and loss, and who is here with me now means everything.
That truth is what anchors me.
So when Kayce clings to me this week, when he panics if I step away, when he cries and can’t seem to be soothed, I wonder if his little nervous system is still shaken. I wonder if he senses more than I realize. I wonder if this is his way of saying, “Please don’t leave me.”
And maybe, if I’m honest, it mirrors the quiet cry of my own heart.
Lord, don’t leave me here alone with this.
This Christmas season has been difficult. Heavy. Tender. Draining. A Christmas I never imagined having.
But I know this with certainty. We would not have made it through this season without Jesus.
There were moments I didn’t have the words to pray. Moments my patience was gone. Moments where grief, motherhood, uncertainty, and disappointment collided and left me feeling empty. And still, He was there.
As the song says, “There was Jesus.”
When the fear came crashing in.
When the tears wouldn’t stop.
When the strength ran out.
There was Jesus.
In the car filled with fear.
On the side of the highway.
In the sleepless nights.
In the guilt and the grace.
He was there in the strength I didn’t have. In the comfort that came even when nothing changed. In the quiet reassurance that I am still held, even when I feel like I’m failing.
This season hasn’t been easy. But it has been covered.
And if you walked a similar road this Christmas, holding joy and grief at the same time, showing up when your heart wants to hide, know this.
You are not weak.
You are not ungrateful.
You are not alone.
There was Jesus.
And there still is.
The Faithful Home 