Easter: to not be alone

Easter means a lot of things to a lot of people. To some, it means nothing at all. Though I was raised in a religious household, and still consider myself religious, Easter isn’t something I’ve always felt strongly about.

Today, I’ve pondered about what Easter really means to me, beyond what it simply represents. And, as I think about its personal significance, I realize that, for me, Easter is about the blessing of not being alone.

My first Easter as a missionary for the LDS church was particularly meaningful. At the time I was teaching Kun Gao, a remarkable woman from mainland China whose husband was LDS. For so many reasons she was unlike anyone I have ever met, or ever will meet.

Kun Gao had extreme sensitivity to chemicals. Living in our chemically-saturated world of pesticides, soaps and scents, Kun Gao was often sick and rarely left the confines of her home. Visiting her required extensive preparation. We had to have our suits dry-cleaned at a special location. We had to use unscented clothes detergent. The day of our visits, we had to shower without soap or shampoo. And even then, Kun Gao would still sense the chemical residue on us and get lightheaded.

She hadn’t always been that way. The problem had inexplicably worsened as she got older, to the point where she interacted with barely anyone — just her husband, her young daughter and us missionaries. Surely, she was well acquainted with loneliness and isolation.

Her baptism was held on Easter Sunday in 2008. With the abundance of chemicals in our church building — carpet cleaning fumes, women’s perfume, etc. — we had to find another location. So we did the baptism at the house of a local church member who worked with homeopathic medicines. His home office was fairly chemical-free, and he had sterilized his hot tub for the baptism.

When I think of Easter, I think of that beautiful spring day.

Kun Gao could not attend church, so once a month our congregation brought church to her. A small group of members, chemically prepared, would visit her home, bring the sacrament, and have a small meeting where they discussed the Gospel and shared their testimonies. Kun Gao later told us that although she still could rarely leave her home, her life was no longer one of exclusion, thanks to these visits. She could not come to them, but they so willingly came to her. And, for the first time in a long time, Kun Gao was not lonely.

One year later, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle in the LDS church, gave a talk during the church’s General Conference. Titled “None Were With Him,” Elder Holland spoke of the solitary journey that was Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and how, in those moments of divine withdrawal, Christ gained perfect empathy for the spiritual loneliness humankind is so well acquainted with.

Ironically, loneliness seems one of the most pervasive forces in our increasingly interconnected world. Perhaps that interconnectedness makes our own isolation all the more difficult to understand.

Because of this, I’m grateful for what this Easter really means: that we really aren’t alone.

We may feel that we are, and in this life we may be incapable of fully removing such feelings. But there is one with perfect empathy for our situation. And that person also overcame death so that death would not be the end for us.

For much of humankind, inequality and sorrow and loneliness are the marks of their mortal existence. But it won’t be so in the world to come, and I’m grateful that such a world was made possible by Him whose resurrection we celebrate today.