It’s almost Easter. Holy Week, as the liturgical calendar calls it. Christmas and Easter: the main two holidays Christians make much of. The Christian church mourns on Friday for the cross, the death of Jesus, and how our sins put him there. Then they rejoice on Sunday because the grave is empty and Jesus is alive. “He is risen!” they will shout tomorrow. “He is risen indeed,” will be the reply.

I firmly believe that. I’ve participated in an Easter service as long as I can remember. But this year is different. No one chooses when God allows the hammer to fall on your life and everything you knew is shattered. The hammer fell for me when Mom got cancer and died. I will never be the same. While I’m still figuring out who I am, I can say with certainty that I see Easter from a new perspective. And I’m writing this down for the hurting. For my friends who have lost their mother, their father, their unborn child, their son, their daughter, their brother, their sister, their aunt, their friend, their spouse. For those who live with grief. For those who have also been changed by it. Perhaps it will help you to know you’re not alone.

If you have tears in your eyes this Easter season, or that ongoing ache in your heart that comes in waves, if you are not the same person you were before and are feeling at odds with everything, if your grief has added an additional burden because now society doesn’t know what to do with your pain and would rather just see you happy than see your real hurt and sit with you in the mess – I’m there, too. A couple aspects of Jesus’ death and resurrection story are hitting home this year, and I want to present them to you in hopes that you see how your tears, your ache and your grief are your Easter worship.

I’ve told a few close friends that this new reality I’m living without Mom often feels like a nightmare. To be frank, though I’ve already tasted some amazing riches from God in this horror, I would trade them again if I could only go back to my old life with Mom. God knows this. We’re talking about it, and I know he doesn’t despise my honest heart but is present with me in it. I know this, too, because the Friday before Easter Sunday, Jesus gives God his honest heart. He says, “I want out. Anything but this, God, please. If there is any other way, I want you to do it. Please just take it away.” His anxiety was so intense, his sweat became blood. It felt like he was dying before he was dying. It was ugly. It was raw. It was honest. And he ended it with total submission to God the Father. “Yet not my will but yours be done.” The hardest, most costly thing Jesus has ever done.

If you are struggling to submit to your new reality, you need to know it’s okay. Jesus did it for you. God knows your struggle. Bring it to him. Be honest with him. Be so honest that your friends at church blush or try to theologically correct you. God doesn’t. He wants that kind of honesty. If you don’t believe me, read the Bible. Perhaps start with Psalm 39 as an example of an honest cry to God out of terrible pain.

Another aspect of the resurrection morning that jumps out to me is Mary’s grief. Only those who have felt it know what she was feeling. To lose all your hope, to lose the person dearest to you, to be completely undone. The ugly cry, the utter mess she was in. I would guess she didn’t sleep Friday and Saturday night, or if she slept, perhaps she too had nightmares of the horror she witnessed. She was in violent, strong grief, coming to anoint Jesus’ dead body as she mourned the loss of her hope and who she thought was going to be her Messiah. Out of all the people Jesus could have chosen to appear to, he waited to show himself first to Mary. To his grief-ridden, foggy-brained, hopeless friend who stayed in the garden after her friends left. Perhaps the angel’s message to her didn’t register through the fog. Perhaps she didn’t yet believe it. We don’t know why she hung back, but we do know Jesus found her in her grief. So too will he find us in ours.

He does not despise our tears; he joins us as we weep them. He does not ask us to put a smile on because it’s resurrection morning. He asks us to be real. He doesn’t theologically correct our cries to him; he sees them as the worship they are. If all you have to offer Jesus this Easter are tears, questions, anger, an aching heart, a struggle to submit, you need to know that is your worship. That is exactly what you should offer.

You have a Savior who suffers. You have a Savior who asked for any other way. You have a Savior who not only died for our sins, but for cancer, for broken relationships, for Alzheimer’s, for Parkinson’s, for miscarriages, for stillborn babies, for depression and suicide, for heart attacks, kidney failures, sepsis, stroke, paralysis, old age, and all the rest. He hates it. He died for the untimely deaths. He died for the senseless murders. He died for the power-hungry, cruel leaders. He died for all of it.

To grieve and mourn the things God hates is part of our worship of him. So if that’s your Easter Sunday, let that be your Easter Sunday. Sit in your grief, be undone like Mary, and let Jesus find you in it. And if a joyful Easter service feels like too much for you this year, that’s okay. Joy and sorrow are intermingled so much more than we tend to allow on Sunday mornings, particularly Easter morning. Pray about how to mark your Easter this year. I know that’s not easy, and I’m doing it with you. Remember: your tears, your ache and your lament to Jesus about them are your Easter worship. It’s only through the darkest trials that true faith and hope and worship actually come.

Thank you, Jesus, for not despising but treasuring our broken hearts and our cries to you.