How do you get over a loss of a loved one?
How do you move on from devastating grief?
April 2, 2018. I woke up again today crying–no sobbing.
It doesn’t happen all the time but when the crying and the sobbing and the grief comes, somehow it feels like I’m at the millisecond of the moment I knew of my loss once again.
Today I cried because for the first time in a long time, I dreamt of my Papa.
I don’t remember what the scenario was but I recalled that his face just appeared in front of me. I vividly remember how his face has now grown gray stubble…almost like a Lolo. My heart broke because my prayer when my Papa was sick was that I would get to see him getting old and becoming a grandfather. I wanted my kids to grow up to have a Lolo, unlike me not experiencing the love and affection of one. And in my dream, there he was. I remember just calling out to him and feeling the texture of the stubble on his face against my hand. It is hard to believe I would get to see him only in my dreams. Then I cried real hard. I sobbed and sobbed and I woke up with a hush.
Somehow I woke up with a split of emotions inside of me–I was feeling broken and I was feeling mended, healed and comforted. I realized, “It’s okay Anj..this is just an episode of grief and you don’t need to live by it.” I woke up being reminded the great redemption has been done and I don’t need to be bound by a wreck of loss because of the hope of heaven.
I was all the more comforted with the #LentenDevotionals that our church released this week. It talked about “What is the significance of Easter Sunday?”
The women who had been with Jesus wanted to tend to his body after the Sabbath only to find the stone rolled over, the tomb empty and the linen neatly folded.
What do we get from an empty tomb?
I love what Pastor Jeff said.
“The great gift of Easter can be summarized into one word–HOPE. For us Christians that’s what we have. That’s one thing that can never be taken away from us. Hope is eternal. Problems are temporal but our hope is eternal.”
Because of the promise of that empty tomb that Jesus who died for us didn’t remain dead but resurrected back to life, we can have hope for the eternal things. Whatever was lost in this world, we will see it eternally redeemed in heaven.
Our hope will never be dashed away. Because our hope is eternally fixed in heaven.
For this reason, our mourning has now been turned to dancing. Death didn’t get the final victory. Jesus won it for us.
We now have beauty from ashes for Jesus has risen from the grave!
51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
– 1 Corinthians 15
Here’s the #LentenDevotionals that I mentioned in this post.