Miss you, dear. How are you spending the long Easter weekend?
Easter is always a tricky holiday to me because it's supposed to be an important festival for Christians, but at the same time it's unlike Christmas where the world echoes it too and is always festive. So I never really treated Easter seriously, until two years ago when I felt my life has changed completely.
In the past two years, Easter has become a time for me to pause and properly reflect on myself quietly and review how my life has been. And the reality is, most of the time when I do that, it means having to face the brokenness within me.
Today I attended the Good Friday service at church. One of the strongest feelings I had was I recalled that the Good Friday service was the first "social" activity I had after coming back from the UK the first time exactly a year ago. I remembered Vienna, Jojo, Rubychu, and my brother came too. It was the first time I met them three again after those days of isolation in the UK. And as much as I pretended to be fine, I still remember how overwhelmed I felt inside.
I felt overwhelmed because I felt the weight of having to face all the things and people in HK that I thought I left behind when I fled to the UK. I left HK 1.5 years ago because my world was broken. Whether you see it or not, my world was already gradually falling apart despite what happened between us. My relationships with my family and friends, my faith, my career, myself, none of these were going right.
Being in HK is in fact more challenging for me than in the UK, because I am constantly being reminded of my brokenness, those mistakes I made, those regrets I had, and those memories that will never come back.
The root of my depression is that I lost hope in the brokenness. I couldn't fix it. My issues, mistakes, decisions, weaknesses.
But that is also the essence of Easter. On Good Friday, we commemorate that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and brokenness, to save us because we can't save ourselves. And despite the grief of loss, we are reminded that we can wait eagerly with hope that he will resurrect and conquer death and darkness on Easter Sunday.
To me, Easter is special because it challenges me to have hope in the darkest moment, to believe in the waiting that all those brokeness will eventually be restored one day and we no longer have to carry the weight of our sins and brokenness all the way till the end.
The truth is, when I look at where I am at today compared to a year ago on that Good Friday, I can still see a lot of brokenness inside me. But at the same time, I can also see there are wounds that are healed, relationships that are improved, and most importantly, that dimming light that was almost gone and put aside is now at the centre of my heart.
I hope my innermost reflection will inspire you and somehow speak to your heart too. Love you.
A photo of church today:
A photo of myself today:
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