2022 Easter Stories: Hannah Gajari

Following Easter Sunday, different members of our congregation are sharing their stories about how they have found hope through Christ’s resurrection despite the pain and brokenness that we experience in this fallen world. Hannah Gajari shared these words at our April 24, 2022 worship service.

. . .

Night falls. My anxiety rises. What internal and external horrors will I endure tonight? Will I hear gunshots? Will someone break in? Will I try to climb out the window in my sleep? WIll my night terrors and screaming wake up my roommates?

For as long as I can remember, nighttime has carried with it a sense of dread. Though my pediatrician assured my parents that my night terrors would fade away after I hit puberty, here I was facing 30 and fearing what dreams, or actually, nightmares, may come.

What proved to be even more frightening than these dreams, however, was the darkness that permeated the reality of both my circumstances and my soul. In the last ten years, I had lost a pastor who was my mentor to suicide, a roommate who was my best friend to leukemia, and my grandmother who was my second mother to pancreatic cancer. In the gaps of time between those losses, I faced the traumas of encountering a dead body, evacuating a foreign country at the beginning of a pandemic, and enduring a block that was overtaken by a gang war.

Internally, things weren't much better. I was tossed around by the waves of grief, smothered by depression, and anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. In the course of these ten years, the faint glimmer of a nearly extinguished candle kept me pressing on down the path of life. But more often than not, the night felt suffocating.

I trudged on nonetheless. Just keep pushing through. My friends and family can hold me up when I feel like I'm drowning. Maybe if I pour myself into ministry, I'll be able to enter into others' problems and distract myself from my own issues. If I go 100 miles per hour, the darkness that is biting at my ankles won't be able to catch me.

But this high speed chase resulted in a crash, and I found myself this past fall depleted of emotional and spiritual energy. I was having a hard time functioning at work. I couldn't make decisions, I was forgetful, and I would burst into tears at the slightest inconvenience. It was time to listen to all those wise mentors who told me that I needed to take a break from running and sit a while with God. A sabbatical that was dished out before my timeline wanted to allow it. This terrified me - taking a break from work, from serving others, from being with others all day every day - this meant no longer running away from the darkness. Instead, God was asking me to run into the darkness. What had not occurred to me before, however, was that what waited on the other side of the darkest of night was, in fact, the dawn.

And so God took my hand and He led me deeper into the night . The light of dawn first crept in through cracks. As I rested with Him, He opened my eyes to see the light - His light. When I stopped doing and started being, my experience of God's grace and good gifts could no longer be transactional. I couldn't depend on my efforts for the kingdom to make me feel close to God and I no longer needed people around me to provide my connection to Him. Jesus became a faithful companion. I became more comfortable sitting with Him and receiving from Him. I could begin to bring heavy burden after heavy burden before His throne. And He exchanged them for His rest and peace.

And slowly, the words of Isaiah finally felt true for the first time in a long time: that a faintly burning wick He will not quench. That candle that had been lighting my path - the flame wasn't fed by the strength of my faith. It was the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit that had been placed in my heart when I surrendered my life to Jesus at 7 years old. And I was now experiencing His presence and power in a new way. God's Spirit revealed other sources of light in the night.The stars, though sometimes covered by clouds, were there, just like God's promises. I witnessed the northern lights. This awe-inducing phenomenon is a colorful dance in the darkness. And it is only visible in the dead of night and the cold of winter. Because of Jesus' death and resurrection, even suffering has a sweetness.

And soon the glimpses in the night led me to day. The crack of light expanded into a horizon. A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting on a dock in Virginia, waking up each day to await the sunrise over the water. Hope had returned to my soul. And I read these words from Luke 1 that prophesied about the arrival of Jesus:

"The sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

Jesus, the sunrise, had rescued me from darkness and the shadow of death. And He had brought resurrection power and life. His light exposed my sin, guided my path forward, replaced despair with hope, and strengthened my joy. A joy that is not dictated by my performance or my circumstances. He did not stop calling to me in the darkest of the night. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead offers daily resurrection strength for me.

And He did all of this without really changing many of my circumstances. Those losses that I listed at the beginning, they're still losses. Scary dreams still plague me. There are days when I feel emotionally unstable and not quite functional. But I remember what author Tish Harrison Warren said in her book "Prayer in the Night:" for the Christian, "light, not darkness, is the constant." And whether I am on a hunt for the colorful light that dances in the darkness or I'm waiting on a dock for the shadows of the dawn, I know that the daytime came yesterday and it will come tomorrow. And l can receive, and therefore reflect, the light and love that is shining on me.