Resurrecting Easter: A Three Part Series

Part Two: The Agony Of Defeat

Easter of 2010 was glorious. I had successfully given up chocolate for Lent and had subbed as the sound tech at the military chapel in Italy. Sunrise service came and went with glorious song. It was perfect. My last wonderful Easter.

Christmas of 2010 was pretty fantastic too…we got to go home for Christmas and see my family, including my grandmother (my mom’s mom), who my kids called “GG” because she refused to admit that she was actually old enough to be a “Great Grandmother.” But then GG got sick, and didn’t improve.

Plans for the spring were made with a backdoor, a “what if,” a “just in case.” Any hotel reservations I made for Spring Break had to be cancelable at the  last minute with no fee. I mean, we get used to doing this anyway with the Army, but this was just another time to be making very tentative plans. Then my husband had to go away to school in Arizona, so all those four-person plans became three-person plans and I needed a child care backup because last-minute flights to America ain’t cheap. 

On the Thursday before Easter, Maundy Thursday, I got the call that GG had passed away. I raced home and packed up the kids, packed up myself, and bought ridiculously expensive plane tickets. Dad told me not to come, but there was no way I was NOT going to be there. I spent Good Friday on a plane, on a trip that lasted forever. Easter Sunday was surreal that year, in a borrowed dress because the airline lost my luggage, surrounded by sisters and parents and nieces and nephews but SO ALONE without my own little family. I said at the time that it was the worst Easter ever. 

The next Easter was the last we would spend in Italy. It was a beautiful day, but had its own bittersweetness to it, as all “lasts” will. The cover photo on my Facebook page was taken on that day. I can’t bear to change it. The triumph of the cross, in the face of a death that is now tied to a holiday, is something I cling to even 7 years later.

Easter of 2013 found us in America, in Clarksville, Tennessee. This was not a good year for us. Moving back to the states, with the “reverse culture shock,” had been very difficult and I was sick most of the time. Add to this that my husband was gone for about half of our time there..including Easter. That year the holiday fell on Spring Break and the kids and I drove down to “the farm” to spend time with my husband’s family. When we got there, we found that Grandma Faye was very ill and not expected to recover. I don’t remember much about that week except for two phone conversations. I called my Aunt crying, “I don’t want to lose another Grandmother on Easter, I’ve done this already and I don’t want to do it again.” The other was with my husband, as we tried to decide when to head back to Tennessee or to stay for the funeral, should Grandma Faye pass while we were there. “What do you want to do?” he asked. “I want to stay in New Braunfels forever and not go back to Tennessee,” I bawled. But go back we did. We left Texas on Saturday and drove for two days to get home. That was probably the first time in my life that I was not in church on Easter Sunday. We got home and heard that Grandma Fay had passed on Easter Sunday afternoon.

Easter was losing “treasured holiday” status as fast as it had been gained.

We got out of the Army in November of 2013 and limped back to “the farm” to lick our wounds and determine what civilian life would look like. Eventually we found a house of our own, a church of our own, and several Easters passed without incident. There was still a heaviness that surrounded the holiday. Joy was there in full force because Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! But the holiday remained a reminder of loss. Slowly, though, one Easter at a time, it became easier to handle.

Until March 29, 2017, when a bus crash killed 13 members of our church, two and a half weeks before Easter. I am not going to dwell on that night because I have written about it before (here and also here). That Easter was a Sunday like no other. I experienced the power of song in ways that I had not before. My broken soul wept and rejoiced at the same time, for even though we do walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we fear no evil, for we know the Lord is with us and He is triumphant.

Easter this year is on April 1. Just two days after the anniversary of the bus accident. I have been dreading it for months. So many hurts tied up in one holiday, and each pain seems to amplify the other. I find myself walking a dark road emotionally at this time, going through unrelated struggles greater than any I have faced before. It’s hard. It’s stupid hard. I know that God will see me through, every step of the way. But that doesn’t make the way easier.