A Broken Alleluia, Still

The dark offers it's own kind of gift -a fractured alleluia,

teaching us that growth often happens not in brilliance,

but in the quiet, painful spaces we wish weren't there.

Last Christmas, my dad was already in jail.

But this Christmas is different.

Last year held uncertainty- waiting, hoping, bracing.

This year carries something more final.

A conviction. A sentence. A name placed beside what he did.

There is a new kind of brokenness in that.

Not louder- quieter. Heavier.

The ache of knowing that this is not just a season we are passing through,

but a reality we now have to learn to live inside.

And still, this is an alleluia point.

Not because what happened is redeemable as it stands.

Not because justice feels clean or healing feels complete.

But because holding both truth and humanity is its own kind of holy work.

The trial this year is not whether I believe what he did was wrong.

That part is clear.

The trial is whether I can tell the truth without letting it erase him.

He is guilty- and he is more than his guilt.

He caused harm- and he is not only the harm he caused.

Naming both does not weaken justice.

It deepens it.

This is the darkness this Christmas enters.

A world where sin is real and costly,

where consequences do not dissolve with good intentions,

and a period of tragic choices outdoes a realm of really good ones.

Where love does not get the luxury of being simple and understood.

Darkness deserves gratitude- not because it is good,

but because it teaches us how to stay human

when it would be easier to harden or simplify.

This is a broken alleluia.

An alleluia that refuses denial.

An alleluia that refuses reduction.

An alleluia that insists a person can be accountable

and still bear the image of God.

Christ came into a world that knew how to condemn

but did yet know how to hold.

He did not excuse sin.

He did not avert His eyes.

But He also did not stop calling people more than the worst thing they had done.

So this Christmas, I stand in the unresolved middle.

Between justice and mercy.

Between grief and love.

Between what must be named and what must not be lost.

My alleluia is not whole.

But it is real.

And in this season, that is the kind of praise that makes room for Christ to come near.