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
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.
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I did.
Great post! I feel like you crawled inside my mind and poked around just a little ❤️
May I admit I struggle with the high holidays? Perhaps I take Paul out of context in Romans 14, but I'm not fully convinced in my own mind that one day is more special than another and find myself getting caught up in why our calendar chooses the day it does and how sometimes it coincides with Passover, as it makes sense to me that it should, and sometimes it doesn't. Never mind the spectacle some of us make out of it, and here I am with only divinely provided jeans and tees. My cynicism is showing, and I apologize.
I love Jesus, and I also cuss...a lot. I love Jesus, and I feel like that should be lived out each and every day...somedays in joyful worship and somedays in a moanful prayer. Idk what I'm even attempting to say, but I'm grateful that you've created a space in which I feel safe saying it.
Because He lives, I can face today, and tomorrow, and the next day...regardless of whether I really feel like it or not. He's good, and He's sovereign, and because of that and oh so much more, I find my hope.