You know those clubs? Those clubs that no one wants to be part of, where membership is never chosen yet still must be paid for in blood, sweat, and tears. For me, it was a miscarriage. For my coworker, breast cancer. For my sister-in-law, losing her mother too young. Membership in those clubs is often invisible, and too often silent, but at any given moment our hearts are breaking. 

About a month after joining the club, I found myself in church pretending to be okay. And in His grace, the Holy Spirit met me there. That Easter morning, my throat choked up as I stood in the choir, singing the precious words that redeemed my circumstances – “Death is crushed to death, life is mine to live.” My heart was still broken, but in the depths of my spirit I had hope. “What a love, what a cost.” Jesus paid everything for my freedom, my wholeness, my life and the life my child never got to live. God’s Spirit ministered comfort to me, and in that moment it was more than enough. I had seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 

The message was not new, but on my thirtieth Easter I heard it with fresh clarity. Somehow God allowed my pain to peel back layers of complacency and self-sufficiency, to cry out from the depths, and receive the only answer that could help – that He met me in my suffering, and invited me to share in His eternal glory. I didn’t want to be in the club…but it turned out that Jesus was a member long before me.