Because He Lives

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I have to be honest with you.

Lately, I am just not nearly as happy as I sound on facebook. Not trying to be fake, as the bubbly-ness comes naturally. It’s hard to explain. It’s like my optimism refuses to die – and that’s good – but I don’t understand how it lives hand-in-hand with so much pain.

Yesterday was Dad’s birthday.

And I almost forgot.

And I couldn’t call him to tell him.

I know where he really celebrated it – and I’m sure he had the mother of all good times.

But I hurt so much this morning, that I can barely breathe.

I feel like a different person.

Death has finally touched me, and I don’t like it. Its cold, clammy fingers are every bit as ugly and horrifying as books make them sound. There is nothing beautiful about death. It isn’t natural. It isn’t the right state of things. It’s the deepest, darkest evidence of God’s creation cursed and suffering because of sin.

I am so grateful that, someday, God is going to make it work backward, and there will be no more death. There is pain in death, but I cannot believe in the sting of its finality. Because death, for the Christian, is not the final page. Death itself will not always exist.

I guess that is why my optimism doesn’t die, because it is rooted in the joy of salvation. I can still laugh, and joke, and enjoy the life I am living because He Lives. This weird duality of pain and joy is something I think I’m stuck with until the day I meet Dad again, in our new, resurrected bodies. I’m learning that I don’t have to understand everything in order to accept it.

So, anyway. That’s where I am today.

What about you? How is your week going?

Grace & Peace,
Tiffany