When Sunday Feels Far Away

 I had the biggest expectations. 

I have been hyped up for Easter for weeks. Literally all of March I have been looking forward to Easter. We studied and learned and planned. The girls have cute dresses, Dean has a cute polo. I stuffed the baskets full of fun things: coloring books, regular books, play doh, sun glasses, all sorts of goofy fun things. 

We celebrate the empty tomb. We celebrate victory over death. We celebrate redemption. 

And my heart feels none of it. 

Maybe I was trying to pretend it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe I was trying to *do* enough that I’d forget. Maybe if we did enough projects, went enough places, were busy, maybe I’d forget...

There is a body missing. A text. A phone call. A “are you bringing the kids to see me?” A “what are your plans? Are you coming over for dinner?” 

And nothing we do fills that. You cannot busy away grief. You can’t ignore it. It makes me uncomfortable and annoyed that I can’t just celebrate. I can’t “just” be happy. I can’t ignore for one day, this is is the first Easter without my Dad. And it hurts. And I wish it didn’t. 

Christ’s tomb was empty, his body that was so broken risen. 

Today it still doesn’t help me when I look up to the corner of the bookshelf where I keep my Dads ashes. 

Today Death still Stings. 

It doesn’t have any victory, but it still stings. 

It won’t always. The farther out we get from October 29, the better I function. Each “first” stings, and I cry, and sit in the ashes for a moment. But it doesn’t knock me down the way Thanksgiving did. Or the way it did when I found out I was pregnant a week after he died. 

I find myself snappy and cranky  unable to shake a bad attitude towards my husband and my children.  All my expectations for an Easter together ruined by a baby with a cold who is quite miserable and keeps hitting me. I am tired of how consistent I have to be with her, I am tired of how “hard” things are.  

I am tired of grieving. 

I picture the empty tomb in my minds eye, the women walking up to it, their complete and utter shock to see it empty. What a thing to witness. What a story to be told. What conflicting emotions after two days of loss and pain and grief.  

I have found more comfort in the grief of Good Friday, more than I have in the Joy of Resurrection Sunday. Because it is still hard to feel the joy when the grief is fresh and raw. 

I don’t think though, that Jesus would mind, that He does mind, that I’m still a little sad today  That the joy doesn’t reach my heart. 

I think He recognizes and understands the deep grief, the kind He felt in the garden. 

Sunday comes. 

And I know, eventually, I’ll feel that in my heart