Written by Ashley Heather Larnder
I ran as fast as I could
but I never lost it.
I climbed as high as I could
and I never overcame it.
I buried it as deep as I could
but the grave haunted me.
I longed for freedom
He began whispering
to journey through it.
Stop moving away
and instead move in;
journey through the pain
and enter into death.
Lazarus’ sickness may have led to death
but it did not end there.
Mary wept in the midst of it,
cried out at its sharpness.
He joined in—
wept—
even though he knew the outcome.
Mary didn’t,
so he joined in;
shared the rawness of her grief.
Why didn’t you prevent the pain?
A greater depth of love is not found
by stopping pain,
denying it,
erasing it.
It is found in the journey through
and the resurrection.
For death is not the end,
it is only transitional.
Did Lazarus touch heaven in those four days?
Resurrection is a bigger sign
than returning from death’s door
and being healed.
To have entered in
and been led out
a transformed soul.
Did Lazarus return a changed man?
A kernel of wheat dies
to produce many seeds.
So I began journeying through
and found freedom,
and I recline at the table.
Ashley Heather Larnder is an epidemiologist by day and a writer in her free time, born and raised on a hobby farm in British Columbia beside a river and surrounded by mountains.
