Making our Way to the Cross and Christ’s Resurrection

Grief is Preparation

As I make my way toward the cross and Christ’s resurrection again this year, I remember a previous Lenten season when I was living in between, having moved out of Kenya and not yet into Uganda. I remember reading Walter Wangerin Jr.’s book, Reliving the Passion. I discovered anew that Lent is a time to experience the sorrows of Christ in preparation for resurrection joy on Easter. I remember pondering deeply how Christians so often have a challenging time entering into the fullness of Easter joy because we don’t enter into the sorrows of Christ. And I remember a profound longing to know Easter joy again, as once I knew it…

Easter of 1985 fell during a season of unknowns. Most of Lent passed while I was quite ill, a patient in the hospital where I was far more accustomed to being the nurse in-charge. “Viral encephalitis,” they said. “End of life as I know it,” I said.

My pain of illness began to diminish as the pain of grief became my reality. I lost the whole of me. I could no longer walk without assistance, I could not think straight, and I couldn’t even put thoughts together to pray. My life as I knew it was gone. The weight of grief nearly overtook me during some of the lonely nights in the dark hospital room.

Then, gradually, like a sprouting spring bulb I began to heal, and I felt life rising up again. As Spring emerged that March of 1985 so did my soul. Visitors brought me sweet-smelling bouquets of brightly colored blooms. I studied those flowers, keenly aware of the work it took to push through the darkness and up into the light. I felt like I, too, was emerging from a dark cocoon and beginning to unfold in the warmth of light. I might never be as I was before the illness, but I had a deep, inner knowing God was making me new.

My joy of that Easter was like none I had ever experienced before! My heart sang, carrying my soul above struggles with the leg brace and my limping walk into the church service on Easter morning. I was alive! God gave me his incredibly special gift of resurrection deep within my soul and I have never been the same. I realized ecstatic joy!

Today, in these reflections, I see that I am now re-membering Easter joy. I came into Easter 1985 through the long preparation of grief and loss. A profound grief. Therefore, on Easter morning I experienced profound joy. What a gift!

Mark Buchanan, in his book, The Rest of God, wrote, “To remember, is literally to put broken pieces together. To re-member. It is to create an original wholeness out of what has become scattered fragments.”  I was broken and Christ used those scattered fragments to create an original wholeness. I praise him! Genuine grief prepares us for profound joy. Jesus shows us the way.

Grateful to re-member,

Christine