Christmas and the winter season have always been rough for me, as they are for many people. I joke with my friends and family that I’m the only person who could possibly get seasonal depression in sunny Southern California. 

In my family, joyful Christmas songs are a big part of the season. A few years ago, I was in the midst of the worst year of my (albeit short to this point) life. As Advent approached, the air felt thick with the magnitude of pain and loss that my family had been suffering due to an ongoing situation that had taken a turn for the worse earlier that year. 

Above is the original version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” sung by Judy Garland in the musical Meet Me in St. Louis (as opposed to the better-known, more lighthearted version popularized by Frank Sinatra). In that hard season, I couldn’t summon even an ounce of joy in the lead-up to Christmas. Singing about being together and parties and even rejoicing in our savior’s birth felt painful, forced, and like an ever-present reminder of the anguish that was just starting to lift. Crooning along with Sinatra about how “From now on, our troubles [would] be out of sight” was an all-out lie.

During that time, I called out to God over and over to bring my family out of the darkness and to pull my mind out of the fog of anxiety and fear that I had been living in. One day I wrote, “I live in a grey cloud—it takes a lot to get through.” I remember feeling so alone. I felt like no one could see into my experience, and since I was mostly away at school and still passing my classes, I didn’t want to add to my family’s distress by asking for too much help. It was a dark time.

This devotional was supposed to be about a time that God gave me hope, but it isn’t, really. I didn’t have any hope that year. But God was there anyway. When I think back to that time, I remember being in that cloud, but I remember God being there too. He helped me hold out until months later, when my soul could sustain some sort of hope again. 

One of the ways he did this was by leading me to Garland’s version of this song. All at once, it started showing up in my life over and over again. Something about the uncertainty, warmth, and pain of this song in its original form spoke to me. The penultimate line, “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow,” rang far truer in that moment than any celebration. God knew that I could relate to a song about going through what’s supposed to be a time of joy, but only having the ability to try to hope that maybe next year might see an end to the troubles at hand. 

That winter, instead of bringing me hope or deliverance or even calm or peace, God just sat with me, let me ‘take refuge in the shelter of his wings’. He gave me the great miracle of companionship, of staying in the pit with me and helping me see that I wasn’t alone—and bringing me this song was just one way that he held me through the night.