Backwards

I'm preparing the lamb roast for Passover. The air is thick with the scent of rosemary from our garden and honey from my husband's bees.  As I inhale, I remember the year that we've had since our last Passover. My husband is a year farther along in his job.  My kids are a year older.  I'm a year... wiser?  Not really.  A year more patient?  Nope.  A year more loving?  More kind? More understanding?  Not even close.

I'm definitely a year more confused. More angry.  More desperate. More hopeless.

Our family is Christian.  We try to follow the ways of Christ.  We celebrate "regular" Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter.  But other holidays are special to us for different reasons. We celebrate Hanukkah and Purim and Passover for the lessons that they teach us and the celebrations that they are.

Passover, in particular, is a beautiful holiday.  It's a way for our family to reflect and remember Christ's death for us, and how that pertains to the angel of death as the 12th plague of Egypt. We celebrate it as a way to ready our hearts for Easter; or Resurrection Sunday.  Passover is usually either right before or right after Easter.  This year, Passover is nearly a month after Easter, and it just feel backwards somehow.  It's hard to reflect on something that is yet to happen.

But, that seems to be the case this year.  A couple of weeks before, my cousin's almost two year-old daughter was killed in a freak accident.  It wasn't supposed to happen, but it did.  That same week, the mother of one of my best friends was diagnosed with leukemia.  She has since passed away - she went quickly.  And that exact same week, another friend's mother died suddenly after having an aneurysm.  And I'm stunned.  And broken.  These were all innocents.  The baby girl was supposed to celebrate her 2nd birthday just a few days after her death. The two mothers were loved figureheads in their families.  They were upright Christian women, who lived wholesome, clean lives. They undoubtedly went on to their reward in heaven.  But what about the heart-broken families that were left here to grieve their loss? What about their lives that were cut short?

Doesn't life seem backward lately?  I know the adage "the good die young."  But that's not quite the same thing here. I have complete assurance of all of these new souls in heaven.  But that doesn't help the hopelessness that I feel about the unjustness of it all.

One thing that isn't backward is that life is a vapor. We're not promised another single day here on earth. I've known that since I was little.  But I've only just begun to *feel* how true that is.