“Why seek ye the living among the dead?”

I’ve got brown hair now & new thoughts on loss:

Since losing Kalea, many people have told me— “All you have left to do now is live the rest of your life worthy so you can be with her again.”

I’ve also heard deceased children called “celestial magnets” providing grieving families with “extra” motivation to make it back to heaven.

Both of those sentiments really bother me now, but for a long time, they made sense. I sincerely wanted this life to be over so I could be with her again. If I could’ve wished or prayed myself dead— I wouldn’t be here— because I spent many of my worst days of grief doing both.

But what I’m slowly coming to understand is what a shallow understanding of Christianity that is.

We’d miss a lifetime of beauty and joy offered by Christ if our primary goal is to simply grit our teeth and get through mortality.

A few weeks ago I found myself mulling over the topic of resurrection. I made an unexpected, paradigm-shifting realization. If all things are both spiritual AND temporal, then resurrection is not just a physical reality after this life, but a spiritual reality *within* this life as well.

Resurrection means “rising from the dead”, or being “raised from the dead”.

That means I will no longer lay at my daughter’s grave and wish for death— but I will trust in the Savior‘s promise of new life and through His authority over death and power of resurrection I can allow Him to raise my heart from the grave and restore my life.

Through Christ, I will experience my own spiritual resurrection (“rising from”) death— not just after my own death— but after all death that deeply wounds me, spiritual and physical.

When you lose someone you love— part of your soul dies with them. It’s something you cannot regain on your own. It doesn’t grow back. It’s not a bone that breaks and heals. It’s a literal dead part of your soul— it’s spiritual death.

The kind of death that only Christ can restore✨even now✨ in this very moment— before everything is worked out, before all the wrongs are made right, and long before any physical resurrection occurs.

And no, I no longer believe that God takes away a family member only to dangle them like a carrot in front of our nose to lead us back to salvation.

What I’m coming to learn is that life is meant to double in purpose and meaning and joy after death. It’s meant to keep going even when it feels like it should stop. And that Christianity is not just about life after death. It’s about life right now.

I’ve also gotten over the belief that life needs to be a certain length to be complete.

I believe that things happen in life. Sometimes for a reason, sometimes for no reason. Accidents exist. Not everything is God‘s plan. It can’t be. Because He allows so much evil which is in direct opposition to his plan to unfold on earth.

God‘s plan— His only plan— is Christ.
Christ makes everything on or off plan work. No matter what happens, if you find Christ, you’ve found the plan.

Two summers ago, I stood in the place we buried Kalea and looked out over the cornfields surrounding the cemetery. When we buried her they had been empty fields. Now they were green stalks swaying in the breeze and standing taller than me.

A spasm of pain struck my heart, “It sucks that the corn is growing and she isn’t.” I thought.

Immediately the Savior’s words entered my mind, “Why seek ye the living among the dead?”

I wasn’t ready to hear it then. I didn’t understand it at the time.

But I get it now.

My soul is shifting.

More and more consistently now I’m beginning to see and experience new life after loss.

Resurrection is real.

I’m living that promise now.

Restoring souls from death to life is what Jesus does best.

And I just wanted to tell you that it comes.