Easter

Been a rough week here with chemo. Still hurting and haven't turned the corner yet. Glad it was the last chemo. A couple months ago I was asked to write a "what Easter means to me in this season of life" article for our church magazine. Thought I'd share it with you...


Cancer. Not a word any of us are interested in hearing. And certainly not a word I wanted or expected to hear after surgery a few months ago. That word started a journey into two more surgeries, two separate cancer diagnoses, the beginning of a chemotherapy more wretched than I can describe, and an end to some long-time dreams.

Yet when asked to write about what Easter means to me in this season in my life, I paused. Because in the deepest sense, even with my deplorable year so far, it means exactly the same thing to me this year as it did last year. The cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not just some long ago event that gave me a “get out of hell free card” that I packed away and plan to use someday. It’s what gave me Jesus, my favorite Person I’ve ever met. Easter is the place where Jesus purchased for me every amount of love and security I’ll ever need. It’s the place I turn for forgiveness and perspective when I daily run away to other places to look for the love and security I already have. It’s the place that lifted the weight of sin, fear, and despair from my shoulders and gave me instead freedom and peace. It’s the hope I have in death and the reason I want to know and serve Him. Easter is no different for me this year than last; it was and still is everything to me.

Admittedly though, experiences like cancer put us in a unique position to see things about Jesus that we might have missed otherwise. And that has been the case for me. It’s a position of suffering I wouldn’t have chosen and I pray ends soon. But it’s let me see Him a little more clearly and experience a tad more fully that which used to be just truths I’d read. For example…

I cannot believe Jesus stayed on the cross. I guarantee you I wouldn’t have. Only 24 hours into my first chemo as I lay in my bed in tears and “I feel like I’m dying” type of pain, all I wanted was out. And if given any option out I would’ve taken it. Jesus endured for hours, not just a physical pain more intense than mine, but the pain of the wrath of God. And He did not take the option of getting down from the cross. He didn’t bail on God’s glory or His followers. My heart almost stops as it considers the magnitude of His endurance in a new way. And it makes me wonder why I ever worry. If He didn’t bail on me then, there’s no way He’s bailing on me now… or ever.

I cannot fathom the power of the resurrection, the death it conquered, and the life it brought. I tear up as I call to mind the chemo room. Though the nurses are as kind and encouraging as you will find anywhere and admittedly some patients will be cured, nothing can hide all the death that room sees. Death of healthy white blood cells along with the cancer cells. Death of dreams. Death of physical comfort. Fear of losing ones you love. Tears of hopelessness as death nears. From the family member on the cell phone crying over the one they are losing, to the look of terror and disbelief in the eyes of a first-timer, to my friend who drove me to chemo this week and looked at me in tears and said, “I don’t know how you come here each week”, no one can measure the pain of the hundreds who walk in those doors each week. Yet in the course of the few days of Easter Jesus accomplished what doctors and nurses for centuries have tried to mimic: He destroyed death. Meditate on that. Jesus destroyed death.

As I meditate on that sentence, my mind and heart can only barely begin to apprehend Jesus’ power. My heart further kneels in humility before Him and melts with gratefulness that He stayed on the cross to exercise His power for me. For without Him…without Easter the chemo room wins. Death wins. Despair wins. Hopelessness wins. But because of and in Him eternal life triumphs over eternal death. Joy obliterates despair. Faith overcomes hopelessness. And another glimpse of Him here and the hope of gazing at Him in eternity reminds me why Easter did and still does mean everything to me.