season 4 // episode 1 // the hope of Christ at Christmas // a conversation with Simone Griffin
This week on the podcast, I shared a hope-filled conversation with my friend Simone Griffin. Christmas can feel lonely, exhausting, and overwhelming for those who are walking through grief. As someone who has walked through grief during the holiday season, Simone’s powerful testimony of hope encouraged my heart, and I know it will encourage yours.
Simone shares with us how she lost a loved one just ten days before Christmas several years ago and how God used this experience to help her know Him as her true and only source of eternal hope.
Simone Griffin is a South Carolina native doing life in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. A wife and mother of two toddlers, she spends her days pouring into her household as well as serving faithfully in her local church and her job as a School Counselor. The way to her heart can be found in a warm cup of coffee and she also enjoys writing, calligraphy, decorating and any other activity that works her creative muscles. She is the author of Glimmers of Hope: A Devotional Workbook for Navigating the Struggles of Womanhood with Grace. You can find glimpses of her life and words over on Instagram (@sincerelysimoneg).
MEMORABLE QUOTES
I know them to be more than just words on a page, because I’ve lived it.
I have a testimony woven with lots of brokenness.
I walked through unexpected grief during the holiday season.
Losing a loved one due to suicide wrecked me.
The time of year made it that much harder—to be consumed with grief and standing in a graveyard a couple days before Christmas when the world seems to be going on with cheerfulness and joy, it just feels so isolating.
I had to cling to the hope of Jesus so tightly in that season, because what else could I turn to?
I really had to fight for hope and saturate my mind with the hope we have in Jesus.
I had to…cling to the gospel message for dear life.
I know this is true because I’ve lived it.
We don’t have to grieve as those who have no hope. We can have hope because grief isn’t the end of our stories, victory is.
There were moments when I couldn’t pray for myself and I needed to go to brothers and sisters in Christ.
Getting in the Word even if you have to crawl your way there with tears and soaked pages and heavy heart, even if you have to fight to believe again and have faith again, just knowing that God is with you.
Jesus is the source of hope, and there’s nowhere else to turn that gives us an eternal source of hope that can’t be shaken or taken.
SHOW NOTES
On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand
Follow Along
Book to Jessica to speak