The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Imagining a Future That Still Holds Light

This ghost gets a bad rap. The dark cloak, the ominous finger pointing, the whole dramatic entrance. I mean…. In most versions of the Dickens Classic, they make it look like the Grim Reaper.  But maybe the future is not a monster in the corner. Maybe it is an invitation. A quiet one, sure, but still an invitation.

Grief can make the future feel like a blank page you are terrified to write on. It can feel like every sentence might come out wrong, or like you no longer recognize the main character. You might wonder who you will be without them, or whether joy has any room left to land in your life. But healing is not a betrayal of your grief. It is not “moving on.” It is moving with. It is carrying the love forward in new ways, some you have not even imagined yet.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come asks a gentler question than you might expect. What do you want to grow toward? Not resolutions that you will forget by January tenth. Not reinventions that require you to pretend you are someone brand new. It asks for quiet intentions. The kind that honor where you have been and still make space for where you hope to go.

Try this: write a note to your future self. Maybe the you who will be sitting in next December, maybe the you who needs a reminder that growth can be slow and still be real. What would you want to say? What small light would you want to carry forward so you do not forget it? It does not need to be profound. It just needs to be honest.

You do not need a five year plan. You do not need a map with every mile marked. One flicker of hope is enough to begin again. One moment of willingness to imagine something beyond the ache is enough to shift the horizon a little.

Because even in grief, there is always something ahead. A sunrise that did not ask your permission to rise. A song that catches you off guard in the best way. A story still unfolding with you in it. The future is not waiting for you to be over it. The future is waiting to meet you exactly as you are, carrying what you carry, building what comes next one breath at a time.

If you’ve followed along through the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future,  thank you for walking through this with me.

Grief doesn’t take holidays off. It doesn’t respect calendars or dinner plans. But like Scrooge learned, even the hardest nights can hold unexpected light. The ghosts didn’t come to torment him, they came to wake him up. Maybe grief does the same for us.

So if your holidays feel quieter, heavier, or different this year, that’s okay. You’re not behind. You’re becoming.

Here’s to carrying love through time.  Past, present, and yet to come.