March 2024 Blog - ...life is seldom a nice, clean storyline.

I’ve lived most of my life with Easter being about two things: Good Friday and Easter (or Resurrection) Sunday. That’s it. Death… Life. Back to back with no space in between. I like it that way. It’s clean, succinct, and peaceful. It carries the sharp message that sure, hard - horrible - things happen in life (even to Jesus) but don’t worry, because Sunday is coming! 

Even though I tend to prefer the idea of a nice, clean storyline I never could make sense of the lack of space between Friday and Sunday that’s implied in the story the way I was told. What happened to Saturday? Where was Jesus? What were his disciples doing? What happens in that liminal space between tragedy and restoration? Because, if I’m honest, that’s where I find myself living more often than not.

Here’s the truth of the matter, life is seldom a nice, clean storyline. Even when dreams are coming true - it’s never precisely lines up with the story we told ourselves to begin with, is it? 

What I mean by that is that most often, we’re creating stories to help us process the world around us. “Hard things happen and then they’re redeemed” is a story that I tell myself to make hard things bearable. “I’ll meet the man of my dreams and we’ll have a beautiful life together” is a story I told myself at 16 to make the future desirable. “I’m going to adopt children one day and it will change the world” is a story I told myself as I tried to win the game of being The Best Christian Ever ™ . 

Imagine my surprise when hard things happen and they’re not redeemed. I got married and as it turns out, our life is beautiful and messy. Imagine my even greater surprise when I began fostering and instead of becoming The Best Christian Ever ™ I found the worst sides of myself. I told myself beautiful stories about what adoption would be like - and it’s beautiful, for sure. But, I have more questions than answers, and a never-ending feeling like there’s not enough of me to go around. 

Can you imagine the disciples' surprise when they’d told themselves the story that their leader was going to overthrow Roman rule… and now he’s dead? I can. It sounds like this:

“Well… shit…THAT didn’t go as planned.”

We’re headed into Holy Week - a highly liturgical week in the church. We use liturgy as a way of returning. The same way that the sun rises and sets each day, liturgy grounds us in the rhythm of life. It places us in a story much larger than our own. I find there’s a particular comfort (and smallness) to knowing that thousands (millions?) of Christians all over the world are praying the same prayers, reading the same scriptures, and participating in communion. It was the liturgy around Easter that explained that Saturday to me… they even had a name for it, Holy Saturday

Holy.

This day between death and life. This liminal space of “now and not yet.” This quiet, tension filled space… it’s called holy. The aftermath of sorrow and suffering, where you’re becoming … what? That’s the thing about Holy Saturday. You have to sit in this space without knowing about Sunday. The beauty and redemption around the corner is always unknown.

This is the space where I live my life… the tension and reckoning. It’s the intersection of brokenness and beauty, and it’s called holy.