Advent Prayers for When December Feels Too Heavy

The tree might be up, or it might not be. The invitations keep coming, and the countdown apps on everyone else's phone say there are so many shopping days left, so many parties, so much to get ready for. You do not feel ready for any of it. Maybe this is the first December after the funeral, or after the diagnosis, or after the marriage ended, and the carols on the radio feel like they are describing someone else's year.

Advent Was Never a Countdown

Before it became shorthand for a chocolate calendar and a deadline for buying gifts, Advent was simply the word for arrival, and the season was built around waiting for something that had not yet come. The earliest Christians who kept it were not ticking days off toward a party. They were sitting with the fact that the world was still dark, still unfair, still full of grief, and that the thing they hoped for had not yet arrived to fix any of it.

That is worth saying plainly, because it means you are not doing Advent wrong if December feels heavy to you. You might be doing it exactly right. The season was built for people in the dark, not people already standing in the light.

Waiting That Does Not Pretend

Scripture does not flinch from this kind of waiting. It does not ask you to perform cheerfulness you do not feel.

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Jehovah. Lord, hear my voice: Let thine ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications. If thou, Jehovah, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, That thou mayest be feared. I wait for Jehovah, my soul doth wait, And in his word do I hope. My soul [waiteth] for the Lord More than watchmen [wait] for the morning; [Yea, more than] watchmen for the morning.

Psalm 130:1-6

Whoever wrote this was not calm. They were calling out of the depths, which is not a place you visit when things are going well. And the waiting here is not resigned, it is strained, the way a person on a night shift watches the horizon for the first grey sign of morning. That is a more honest picture of Advent than most calendars give you. You are allowed to be a watchman still waiting, not a guest already at the party.

It is also worth saying, because this gets twisted so often around hard anniversaries and hard years, that scripture does not treat your grief or your exhaustion as something you have earned by failing God.