Not the Monday You Planned On

For those who feel stuck in Holy Saturday

I woke this morning with a pulsing headache, you know the kind. You try to locate where it’s radiating from (Temples? Jaw? Neck? Everywhere? Yes, everywhere.), try to lure it away with caffeine and Tylenol, rub some oil on your forehead, nothing works. You become certain it’s a tension headache, especially because you’ve spent your morning navigating various situations, none of which are your own situations except, by nature of being one of the family of God, they now are. Bear one another’s burdens and all that.

And now it’s almost noon and this is not the Monday you planned on, this is not the Monday you needed to have in order to make the following eight Mondays work.

It’s the day after Easter. Maybe you wore your Sunday best or covered a cross with flowers or worshipped alongside those who have seen you at your Tuesday worst. Maybe you haven’t had a church family of your own in a few years and you stayed home and watched makers making stuff on YouTube.¹ Maybe you went to a church that isn’t your home church or church family or really anything except you just felt you had to show up somewhere and so you did. Maybe you took a hike. I don’t know.

But I do know what it feels like to finish a race or get to the end of a puzzle or a really great book series. I know what it feels like the day after, when all the hype has worn down and the rush has worn off or the fervor has broken. I know what it feels like to say, “What now?” Or “Is this it?”

My friend

Jessica Herberger

wrote a book called Peace in the Dark that released earlier this year. It’s a book about Holy Saturday, but really, it’s a book about every Monday. And Tuesday. And Saturdays and sometimes Sundays too. It’s about the days when the darkness doesn’t seem to lift and we can’t even pinpoint the area of its specific pain and it mostly just radiates all around us—which, for most of us, is the other 364 days of the year.

I’m a Christian which means I believe Jesus died, rose, and is coming again. But it also means I believe Jesus ain’t back yet and even our Sunday best isn’t going to change that. In fact, this may be unpopular, but I think our Sunday best is sometimes antithetical for those who still live here, right here. I don’t know why the tradition started but sometimes I wonder what Jesus thinks when he sees everyone all lined up in pastels and frills, while he’s still up there with scar marks on his hands and feet and thorn scrapes on his forehead.

I know we all need days to remember hope, to lighten our hearts and gladden our souls, and maybe Easter Sunday is that. But I think for most of us, we’re still hanging around the margins of Thursday or Friday or Saturday and maybe Sunday felt a little too premature for us.

And I guess, from one who told her husband on Friday that this season feels like one long Holy Saturday—death not trampled, darkness not vanquished, grief still potent—to you, it’s okay if today isn’t the Monday you need or the Monday you want either.

Have you preordered my latest book? The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor?

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1. I did.