Sabbath Devotional :: Concentrated and Consecrated Grief Leads to Joy in Christ

“Oh Savior, Thou Who Wearest a Crown,” performed by Emma Petty Addams

Two years ago, I spoke in my ward’s Sacrament Meeting on Easter and one year ago, I shared that talk as a devotional with my MWEG sisters. For some reason, sharing an Easter message feels even more daunting this year! You each have access to thousands of beautiful essays, talks, poems, images, and meditations on Holy Week. What could I possibly add to that body of work by exceptional writers and artists?

When I begin questioning the worth of my own thoughts like this, I find it best to return to the simplicity of my testimony and particular circumstances rather than seek for something grand. After completing that exercise over the past couple of weeks, I have found that Easter 2024 is for me about one clear idea, grounded in some very personal experiences I will share with you.

Easter weekend is a beautifully concentrated example of the depths of grief and sorrow paired with the ecstasy of love (“agape”) and renewal. In that way, it is a microcosm of the mortal experience as we learn to love more perfectly through the experience of loss and separation. Being acquainted with grief actually expands my vision of what reconciliation and reunion can look like. Each time a family member passes, it enlarges my view of heaven and increases my desire to do and be better. Not out of fear that I won’t be with them, but because I am drawn to the sort of heaven that includes them.

Consecrated loss allows me to experience what deep, eternal, joyous love feels like. It is suffering that drives me to turn to Christ for support. And, as death seems to come for my family in multiples over short periods of time, in my life there is a concentration that accompanies (and perhaps forces?) the consecration.

Eighteen years ago this June, my father passed away from a rare form of cancer. He was young — only three years older than my own husband is today. My oldest son Johnny was six months old when my dad was diagnosed, and my second son Hudson was six months old when he passed away two and a half years later. We gave Hudson the middle name of Keith after my dad (and grandfather who had passed away only a couple of years earlier) and flew across the country to have him blessed in my parent’s ward so that my dad could participate. The night my dad passed away, Hudson Keith slept through the night for the first time as I kept vigil at my dad’s bedside and a week later, he weaned himself the night of the funeral. It felt like a double and cruel grief at the time.

My father’s passing concluded a period of time when four close family members died — some old, some young, one because of a heart attack and the rest due to cancer. It all felt like too much. I coped by focusing on the demanding needs of my little family, choosing to set aside the grief.

Alas, grief is demanding, and it will not be ignored. When it is shoved out of sight, it has a way of leaking out in small moments that add up to very inconvenient explosions. It took many years, but I gradually did the work of acknowledging my pain. Which resulted in an unexpected delight: saying out loud how much I missed my dad, in particular, gave me space to find joy in the special relationship I had with him. And over time, as I have chosen to no longer hide from the pain of loss, it has opened me up to understand love that transcends mere affection and attachment — it actually surpasses mortality.

As illustrated by my lengthy (and ongoing) struggle with grief, there is no precise prescription here, nor will I attempt to wrap up this devotional with a beautiful bow. While the details of my personal grief are unique, its existence is not. I am quite confident that you each have a custom concoction of sorrow that has stretched, is stretching, or will stretch you to your limits. There may be details of my battles that resonate and/or you may find yourself perplexed by my coping mechanisms in the aftermath of a loss.

But I do think we can all find commonality in our worship this Easter weekend as we do the work of grappling with the gulf between the circumstance of Christ on the cross and then outside the empty tomb in resurrected form. Experiences of grief and joy on either side are universal, as is the abyss in between. And it probably is not as neat as that makes it sound, instead rather mixed up all together in a messy life of complex relationships and emotions.

But there is something universal here and Sunday is the day we celebrate it. Christ is in the Garden and on the cross and in the tomb and outside the tomb. He is in the grief and in the denial and in the confusion— and He is in the reconciliation and the realization and the JOY!

As Elder Wirthlin once taught, “Sunday will come.” Of that I feel quite certain. And so, this weekend I allow myself to feel the joy of that! I revel in the happiness of a Sunday made more beautiful by many Fridays drenched in sorrow. I imagine a reunion with my father and so many others that is possible because of the life of an elder brother who sacrificed all.

I think it took intense grief for me to start to understand joy. Loss has allowed me to experience what deep, eternal love can feel like. On Easter Sunday I celebrate all of it together, concentrated in and consecrated by my Savior!

Note: A simple hymn seems like an appropriate accompaniment to this devotional, made even more “real life’ by the voices of the junior high boys roaming through my house this evening!
https://youtu.be/H9yIAHcLpYE