He is risen! He is risen indeed!

[I wish I had a camera this morning to capture the changing sky while I sat and wrote this Easter morning.]

I woke up early and saw that the sun was rising across the estuary from our bach. We are on the west coast of New Zealand so I didn’t expect to see a sunrise but with all the convoluted roads along the coastline, I guess we ended up facing east.

I wrapped myself in my prayer shawl from Yorkfield (our church) and found a dry seat near the water’s edge.

[The sun was already officially up but shining upwards towards low-laying clouds.]

I wrote about the last few weeks. I am happy that Anne and James are married and seem so happy together. I am pleased by the family that Anne is joining here in New Zealand, gaining three big brothers who love to play and laugh and love (and their wives and girlfriend.) James’ parents love their family and have welcomed Anne into their midst.

However, I’m none too happy myself. My time here in New Zealand has been harder than I imagined and I expect to leave with an even heavier heart. I feel like a dream of mine has died here, or at least taken a severe beating. I don’t know if that dream would have ever been realized, but now it seems out of reach. I will leave my daughter behind, not knowing when we will see her next.

[About this point in my thoughts, the sun began peaking over the near horizon—dazzling bright.]

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

I began thinking about the book I’ve been reading—Bittersweet by Shauna Nyquist. From the back cover:

The idea of bittersweet is changing the way I live, unraveling and reweaving the way I understand life. Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness.

Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet. Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, nuanced, full of depth and complexity. It’s courageous, gutsy, audacious, earthy.

This is what I’ve come to believe about change: it’s good, in a way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. I’ve learned the hard way that change is one of God’s greatest gifts, and most useful tools. Change can push us, pull us, rebuke us and remake us. It can show us who we’ve become, in the worst ways and also in the best ways. I’ve learned that it’s not something to run away from, as though we could, and in many cases, change is a function of God’s graciousness, not life’s cruelty.”

Someone read the above aloud and another concluded, “It’s the cup half full instead of half empty.”

No. No. No. (I wanted to say.) It is much more than that. It’s when life keeps hammering away at you, wave after wave, slam after slam. When you think you’ve weathered one storm and another one follows, and another, and another.

[Actually a pretty good description of the weather in New Zealand the last few weeks.]

Believe me. If viewing the cup as half full was a simple solution to the emotions battering my soul, I’d be the first to sign up. 1,000 Thanksgivings is a great book and a great discipline, but it hasn’t been an easy answer for my sadness this winter. I’m pretty sure that it is a cumulative sadness, a post-cancer kickback + mourning + surgery + changes in the wedding plans + adapting to a different culture + ?????

[About this time, the morning sky had mostly clouded over but the tiny rays still escaped a hole in the clouds, suggesting hope.]

Last October, around my 60^th birthday, I wrote a life sentence. I didn’t memorize it because I still am not certain that it fits. Essentially I believe that my life should demonstrate that God is good in the midst of life’s disappointments. I’m afraid that is a bit of a “negative” view of life and I’ve been told not what God wants for me. But it seems to be the life He has given me, and possibly his purpose for me.*

[At this point, the sky was completely cloudy but the sun kept popping through the clouds, slightly visible. Sometimes it would skid behind the clouds, visible as a sphere, just enough to remind me that it was still there, an apt metaphor for me to remember on days when no sun seems visible.]

At this point, I opened my Bible to read where I last left off: Psalm 139. I thought I knew the Psalm and would find it interesting, but the words leapt off the page speaking comfort and hope to my heart:

Oh Lord you have searched me and known me

You know me when I sit down and when I rise up

You perceive my thoughts from afar

You discern my going out and my lying down

You are familiar with all my ways

Before a word is on my tongue

You know it completely, O Lord.

You hem me in—behind and before

You have laid your hand on me.

Such knowledge is too lofty to attain.

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there.

If I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn (this morning?)

If I settle on the far side of the sea (Anne?)

Even there your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me fast.

Even the darkness will not be dark for you,

The night will shine like day for darkness is as light to you.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I was fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful.

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. How vast is the sum of them.

Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.

…

Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there be any offensive way in me.

And lead me in the way everlasting.

[As I read the psalm, blue skies and bright sunshine emerged along with a sense of hope.]

Later that day, I read the Psalm to Anne as we gathered for a pre-baptism gathering and I started crying before I finished the reading. And cried more as we prayed and watched John baptize his daughter in the estuary in front of the house.

[Clouds, slight drizzle and only one small patch of blue sky.]

Bittersweet is a perfect description of my Easter Day. While God touched my heart in the morning with scripture and sunshine and my daughter was baptized, my heart still broke, the bitter along with the sweet.

Yet, He is risen! He is risen indeed! Happy American Easter. (The New Zealand one is almost over.)

 

*The actual life sentence is this: Chris Hurni exists to experience (receive) the love and grace of God in a broken world, and share (honestly, openly, and joyfully) hope in this life and in the world to come.