Every Sunday, my husband and I get to teach our class of 5-year-olds about Jesus. This last week we talked about one of my favorite truths: because of Jesus, everyone will be resurrected. One of the little girls who was unusually rambunctious that day—the one who had spent the first half of the lesson climbing up and over tables and chatting with her friends—suddenly frozen, turned, and gave us her full, enthusiastic attention.
“Like my dad?” she asked, with the pure excitement only a child could. This girl has told us many times about her father who died when she was a baby, and we’d wondered how she should react to this part of the lesson.
It was the most beautiful thing in the world to look right into her eyes and say “Yes!”
She literally jumped for joy. And then she turned right back to her classmate, this time telling her all about how excited she was that she’d get to meet her dad.
I’m so grateful for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His promise that EVERYONE will be resurrected one day. But I also know all too well that knowledge of the resurrection doesn’t entirely erase the sting of death. At least not yet. I still miss our baby girl every single day. Some days the grief comes in so heavy that it replaces whatever plans I had for that day with a giant pile of tissues instead. And I don’t think any amount of “just having more faith” will fix that.
President Russell M. Nelson was a special witness of Jesus Christ and renowned heart surgeon. He likely spent time close to many families who were left heartbroken when even the most advanced medical procedures couldn’t save their loved ones. This is what he had to say about grief.
“Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love. It is a natural response in complete accord with divine commandment: ‘Thou shalt live today in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die.’ (Doctrine and Covenants 42:45.)
“Moreover, we can’t fully appreciate joyful reunions later without tearful separations now. The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.”
President Russell M. Nelson, emphasis added
It has been said that “grief is love with no where to go.” I have felt that over and over in the months since our baby girl’s funeral. But I also felt that for years and years before we had her, when all we wanted was a child of our own. When we prayed and prayed for our empty arms to be filled. When our grief didn’t even have a place to go, because it was for children who no one even knew because they were never even conceived. That grief was just as heavy, maybe even worse.
Grief and faith, grief and hope, grief and love can coexist—have to coexist—yet when the grief starts to overpower everything else, I am grateful for other’s words of faith to pull me out of its depths. Recently those word came from a young nephew, who knew and loved our baby girl, and who sang with the rest of her cousins at her funeral. I got a text from his grandma, sharing the part that he wrote for himself to share in his ward Primary Program.
“This year,” he said, “I learned that death is a part of the Plan of Salvation, but is only temporary. Because of Jesus’s resurrection, we will live again and be reunited with family members we have lost.”
It can be so complicated, but it can also be that simple too. Because of Jesus’s resurrection, we will live again and be reunited with family members we have lost.
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