My heart breaks for a lot of things these days, but my heart is especially breaking for my queer and faithful family this winter.  I want to speak into that pain and isolation and longing and declare the promise:  you are not alone.

You are not alone because there are hundreds of thousands of people who walk this path with you.  They are everywhere around the globe, and they are unknowingly beside you in your city and town and church and coffee shop.  There are churches across the country that celebrate and welcome "people like us."  There are pastors and parents and families and friends who long to bear us up in the dark.

And you are not alone because there is something greater at work in us.  For people of faith who celebrate Christmas, there is more to this world than what we see.  There is a story long told of a God who loved the world so much that the divine slipped into skin, broke into humanity, not as a power tearing open the clouds and trembling the world into terror but as a child, born into the fringes of society among the vulnerable, the poor, the homeless, the weak.

I believe this.  And it gives me hope.  In times of darkness, I turn to the love of friends and family, and the promise of Christmas, for a glimpse of light.

And I want to collect more glimpses like this.  I want to know where others who have walked in darkness have seen great light.  

So I ask you:  In times of darkness, where do you find light?