In my previous post, I reflected on my appreciation for Good Friday through 5 recent months of depression. Good Friday makes Easter glorious. Death’s sting is real, but it is not the end. Death ends with resurrection. Seek, and you will find it everywhere. 

On Saturday morning at 5:30 a.m, we awoke to the sound of a car wreck. David and I dressed quickly and went to help. The truck was totaled, its impact on the brick staircase lessened by plowing through the blossoming pink dogwood on the church lawn. The woman in the passenger seat injured her leg, but otherwise, she and the driver were unhurt. The police, fire department and ambulance filled up the narrow street. David said that the tree probably saved them: big enough to slow them down, small enough not to hurt them. David, Ben and Kelly cut up the flowery branches and soaked the oil spills with sawdust. Death, and resurrection.

While everything was happening, I felt alert and clear-headed, but once the street became quiet again, my body started to crash. My bipolar means that I need consistent sleep. Even one disturbed night will mess me up for days. Since our nutrition makeover, I have been consistently well for over two months, but after Saturday’s excitement I have felt varying degrees of fatigue, sadness and anxiety. I’ve napped at least twice every day. This afternoon, I lay on the couch feeling my worst, eyes closed. I praised the Lord as thoughts drifted through my mind. I then saw in my mind’s eye a blazing white figure bending over me, comforting me. I got up and made tea, praising all the more. Death, and resurrection.

The winter of depression was like death to me. Jesus took me into the Valley so that He could still my heart enough to receive the fullness of His love, cast into sharp relief by the darkness. Spring, the season of rebirth, mirrors the new life springing up inside me. Through the gatherings that take place at our church between the services, I’ve been learning and practicing two spiritual disciplines, Lectio Divina and The Daily Examen. These ways of quieting my soul in the Lord’s presence have begun to permeate all the spare moments of my day. Death, and resurrection.

We sang this song at New City on Easter Sunday: “Death cannot keep his prey/Jesus, my Savior/He tore the bars away, tore the bars away/Jesus, my Lord/He arose, a victor from the dark domain/And He lives forever, with His saints to reign/Up from the grave, up from the grave/Hallelujah, hallelujah/Christ arose!”

He is risen. He is risen indeed.