The original version of this post first appeared December 24, 2025 on the Faithful on the Clock Substack.
Years ago, in the winter when I was back in college, I had to walk from the music building on campus to my apartment. The walk wasn’t long. But completing the trek loaded down with books and music gear was torture — excruciating pain would travel up my neck as all my muscles tried to shiver under load. I’d have to psych myself up just to make myself push open the door and leave.
Are you giving yourself the same kind of mental pep talk just to get through the day?
Life can become like that. The short walks that should be “no big deal” aren’t, because we have to perform them carrying the last of our hope and everything else that’s accumulated.
These are the bleak midwinters where we feel like no one sees and don’t know how we’re going to make it home.
Home to our living rooms.
Home to God.
In those walks, everything crumbles and our footing becomes unsteady. Sirens moan as the wind and the cruel hardness of the world hits us, and our despair asks, “Where is God?”
Music by For King + Country, Canva Pro PMLA
For most of my life, I didn’t know.
Then, on YouTube of all places, I heard world-renowned trauma specialist Diane Langberg give a talk. Her answer was simple but profound.
God goes before.
In every circumstance, you are understood
Langberg emphasized that no matter what we have experienced, Jesus has already walked it. From having His intent grossly misread and being unsafe in His homeland to being physically broken and humiliated, there is no abuse or circumstance He does not understand.
No matter what is happening to us, this is not an accident. Long ago — so long ago — Jesus arrived as our help, predetermined from God’s joy and desire to rescue us.
Jesus has gone before, feeling our wounds for Himself and clearing our path with the most intimate of power.
Our journey, therefore, is not wasted. It doesn’t matter if you’re the kid getting his books kicked away by a bully, the guy living under the overpass, or the spouse who no longer is loved. Poor as we are, with only a broken spirit to offer, He is ready in our moment of exhausted surrender to counter what the world has tortured us with.
Healing requires focusing on the right anthem
The holidays in all their twinkling don’t always offer clarity about this. With our straining muscles still also frozen in self-protective armor, the anthems about joy we don’t yet feel paradoxically disconnect us even further from it. Keep performing, the notes seem to sing. It is not so bad as to justify ruining everyone else’s Christmas with complaining, and others most certainly have it worse.
But in our pain, there is another anthem.
As circumstance after circumstance falls on us, snow on snow on snow, Christ is not held in Heaven. He instead has gone before us, laid in a manger so that He might now — in this day — receive the heart that has nowhere else to go but to surrender.
Perhaps you are like George Bailey sitting in the bar in It’s a Wonderful Life, so lost that all you can do is pray He shows you the way. That is not hidden from Him. The prayer is not lost.
God has all the warmth and time you ever could need
In whatever bleak midwinter you are living, God is warmer than you could ever imagine. Because He has gone before, you are qualified to take off your coat, to lay down what you carried all the way to Him. He sees the frostbite, and He hears what you say in your silence. As He sits with you in patience, His gift is His eternity of time.