Christmas is a time for reminiscences. All you need is lights on a tree, sugar cookies, and a few carols to access blessed feelings stored up from a lifetime.

Holy week, on the other hand, evokes more complicated emotions. The events of a few days vacillate from jubilation to despair. Sacred trust to betrayal. An intimate supper in an upper room to murderous crowds. Death to new life. 

Holding those disparate moments can be both comforting and confusing. 

Our family has weathered our own losses around Easter as well. There was the time I miscarried on Palm Sunday. John was on a trip, so my poor daughter was stuck helping me mop up the mess, which she will probably need therapy for. The emptiness of the tomb had more significance for me than ever before. Another time our son totaled his car, which left me as crumpled as the wreck that was towed away in the pelting rain. Then there was the year our nephew was taken by suicide. A loss for which there are no words. 

The agony of Jesus's death is excruciating. The hopes of a nation snapped like a magician's rope, when they had believed it would pull them out of slavery. 

But then everything changed. Instead of conquering the Romans on their own turf, Jesus stepped into an entirely different reality. One where women could find him in the garden. One where boulders could not keep love away. One where torture becomes but a step in the path to eternity.