Learning to live in the Easter season has been a new step. There is no pause from the grieving. I have been crying daily for almost 11 months. But parallel to that part of this process, I am still living and filled with joy and even happiness much of the time.
The focus of Easter, the resurrection, has brought me to a new stage of this journey. The timing could not have been more potent. I was able to visit Shah’s headstone on Good Friday. Seeing it brought me to a new place of understanding the reality of Shah’s death. Every time I think the truth of what happened has finally sunk in, something else happen to make me realize the truth that he is gone has not fully hit. And so on Good Friday, I sat at the cemetery and just let the finality sink in. Zoya’s daddy is not coming back. He will never walk through the door again. She is grasping that, and so am I, just very slowly.
But Good Friday isn’t the end of the story and this is not the end of Shah’s story. Easter isn’t just an idea or a season of new life, like spring time. On Easter we celebrate a very real resurrection. Easter is about someone who was really dead, all the way dead, stone and all, coming back to life. Death wasn’t the end of Jesus story, and death isn’t the end of Shah’s story.
I used to strive to keep the reality of another world in my mind. Now it is just about all I think about.
Few who study history question if the man named Jesus ever lived. The real question is did he live again after he died. Twelve men who knew him best were so convinced that he rose again that they suffered and most died for that belief. Their actions make me rest more and more in the truth of the resurrection.
I still have any questions that I’m wrestling with. Why didn’t that death and resurrection bring about a new heaven and new earth right away? Why is the world so evil and broken still? If Satan was defeated, why does the world look like this?
There is a part of me that is still in all out war, wresting with these questions; but with the truth of the resurrection, I am learning to rest in peace.
God only gave me 3 years with him and my heart is broken with pain and disappointment, and I sit with a longing to join Shah that does not lessen with time. But I also sit in peace, filled with hope in a restored world and a resurrected reunion.
God Provides for Us 
Beautiful. Hugs.
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