Easter Spirit

You know how it feels in those final weeks before Christmas when you don't feel like you have the Christmas "Spirit"?  That is how I have felt the past week leading up to Easter.  My focus hasn't been what it should be, it hasn't been on the Savior.  So of course in those final days leading up to Easter I wasn't feeling it.  I was feeling like it was just going to be another Sunday. 

But then things changed.

Because I attended a funeral.

This funeral was for a girl who had been on Makenzie's ballroom dance team.  She was 18 when she passed away from liver cancer.  I went to the funeral out of support for Makenzie.  I didn't really know Risa all that well.  I had only spoken with her a couple of times.  But the impact her funeral had on me will remain with me for the rest of my life.  I am still in awe at  how an 18 year-old girl could teach me about what having a testimony of the Savior is.  Her funeral was not a telling of her life.  Rather it was the telling of her testimony of the Savior, Jesus Christ, His atonement, his resurrection and the life he led.  Her brother read from her journal and in-between passages the choir that she had been a part of would sing songs about what she had wrote about. All songs about Jesus Christ.  I was moved to tears during most of it. 

So when I woke up on Sunday morning I was very grateful for having attended Risa's funeral. I was grateful to her, and the example she set for me. I paid closer attention during church and listened more intently to the words that were reverently spoken about my Savior.  And my Easter was wonderful.

Thank you, Risa.