Easter is like the Superbowl for believers...and we win every single time.
It's a BIG deal.
And not just for one Sunday out of the year.
The story of Easter is a big deal the other 364 days, too.
God sending His only son to earth to live a blameless life and to willingly die the cruelest of deaths as a sacrifice for our sin...for my sin...it's a HUGE deal. But it doesn't end there. Jesus arose from his grave victorious over death. Oh, what a Savior! I am so undeserving of such grace.
But there's something about the Easter story that is more real to me this year than ever before.
Death.
That word.
It is still so very present in my life today.
For the first time, I understand just how much pain it brings. And while the focus of Easter is 100% about Jesus (as it should be), I find myself thinking about that time between death on Good Friday and resurrection on Sunday morning and those who were temporarily left behind on Saturday.
Saturday.
Oh, how I understand Saturday. The pain that his followers and disciples must have felt. The pain of his mother, his brothers. The hopelessness. The finality of it all. Death.
I wonder if they all stayed close together and retold favorite stories and shared memories.
I wonder if they were crying until they could hardly breathe one minute and then angry at the world the next.
I wonder if they found one of His robes and just held it up to their noses and inhaled deeply.
I wonder these things because I've done them all in trying to navigate through this firestorm of grief.
You see, I'm stuck on Saturday.
And I'm afraid of how long I'm going to be here.
My world is a world of hurt and pain all brought on by death.
It's been just over three months since we said goodbye to Daddy and sometimes (let's be honest, most of the time) I feel like I'm still on day one of processing this. It's been three months of mental agony. And it's felt like three years. I knew it would be hard...I just couldn't have imagined how hard it was going to be. I want so desperately to feel back to normal, back to the me I was before January 8, 2014.
It's another thing on the list of things I grieve: my old self. The happy, joyful girl I have always been. I smile on the outside, but my soul is crying on the inside...and sometimes it screams...loudly. The denial stage of grief didn't really last very long before I plunged headfirst into anger. So much anger - and sadness. And I am NOT an angry person, which is probably why I don't know what to do with it or how to process it. I am so angry that my Daddy had to die. I might be even angrier that he had to endure such a terrible cancer for so many years. I am angry that my Mom has to live alone. I am angry that he won't see my baby sister graduate from college next month. I'm angry he won't ever get to hear his grandchildren call him Paw-Paw or tell them stories about fishing on the river. And frankly, I'm angry that I can't pick up the phone and call him or laugh at one of his atrociously spelled text messages.
Seriously, the list goes on and on and on...
Sometimes I wonder if I'm really just learning how to polish up the outside so that everyone around me thinks I'm moving on quite nicely. Maybe that's what you're supposed to do? When sweet friends check in on me to ask how I'm doing, I struggle with whether to give the usual "I'm okay" or to actually vomit up the truth because how I'm really doing is so real and raw that I don't want to burden anyone else with it. So most of the time, I give the usual. Sometimes it's the truth. Sometimes it's not.
In a conversation with one such friend who has been especially compassionate the other day, I may have done a little of that vomiting (oops). I shared with her that nothing really feels normal. Even the things that I love, like going to church. Here's a confession for you on this Easter evening - most of the time in the last three months, I haven't felt like going at all. Public gatherings are terrifying. They are emotionally compromising. Particularly because the old me loved to belt worship songs at the top of her lungs until my eyes get all teary in just love and adoration for a God who loves me so much. But lately if my eyes tear up for any reason at all (whether it's from singing a song of praise or a rousing rendition of Frozen's "Let It Go") I cannot control the flood that follows. So I don't belt as loudly. And I miss belting.
So does that mean I am angry at God? I don't think so. But that's because I have a relationship with Him. And that relationship is good.
"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18
Don't get me wrong - there have been moments that my anger has been directed at Him and I am certainly full of questions, but He has always been right there. In those moments of despair, I feel His presence more than ever before.
And that brings me back to why I need Easter.
Saturday was painful, but Sunday is coming.
On Sunday, Hope came back to life. And all the tears and hurt of Saturday vanished. Because of Sunday, the atonement for our sin was complete. A God who loved us in our broken sinful state allowed His only son to die in our place.
And this Easter, I need a hope like that. A hope that it is going to get better. A hope that holds on so tightly and never leaves my side. Jesus is that hope. Praise the Lord for Sunday!
And tomorrow, no matter what, I am belting this song.
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives, all fear is gone;
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living,
Just because He lives!
7 years ago