Beauty For Ashes: It's Saturday... But Sunday's Comin'

"You are alone?"

That's what the greeter at church asked me on Sunday. It was like a Happy Easter slug in the jaw. Of course, I know she didn't mean anything by it. She was just asking me how many seats were needed. But it was out there nonetheless.

Alone.

On Easter.

My husband and five children not with me. So very weird and raw. I almost didn't go. I'd been up half the night praying about a worrisome issue about one of my kids (which I really have to quit doing! Give it to God and go to sleep, Anna!). So, in the morning I laid in bed exhausted and groaning at the ceiling and fighting with myself.

"Go to church."
"No."
"Go."
"No!"
"GO to church. It's Easter!"
"I know that!"
"Go to church."
"No."
"Go."
"No."
...

"Go."
"Fine, I'll go."

And then the alone thing happened and I felt like I had a billboard floating directly above me in my cute Easter outfit that said, "Alone. Loser. Please awkwardly ignore me. Don't be alarmed if I do the ugly cry... Again."

After the service I wandered around the patio crowded with families and happily married couples in dazed confusion because I seriously did not know what to do with myself. Walking into walls again. What does one do on Easter when one's family isn't there? I finally decided to sit in my car until my brain was functioning well enough to drive home safely.

It was a hot mess of a weekend.

On Good Friday, I went to church with my parents, my brother, and his family. It was a very powerful service full of organ music, a robed choir singing, quiet contemplation, Scripture reading, enactment of the crucifixion... I was a snotty, drippy, red-nosed, thankful, hot mess.

Then came Saturday -- full of conflict, turmoil and pain, worry, zero control, no way to even influence circumstances, anxiety, tears and sleeplessness. Saturday -- no answers, no resolution, no peace, and no appearance of hope.

I am realizing that's where I am in life. I'm in the season of Easter Saturday.

Maybe you are, too.

Everything I expected and hoped for has completely upended painfully, frighteningly, dramatically, confusingly, threateningly. I watched it all die in a nightmare of betrayal, lies, threats, brutality, and fear without being able to stop it no matter what.

Confusion, panic, shock, trauma, so much remorse and regret in having handled it so very badly. I panicked, I got angry, I flipped out, I denied, I feared, I fled and I hid.

Easter Saturday is when we do not yet know the redemption that's coming. We do not yet see God's amazing, transforming power raising the dead and bringing new, miraculous, no one could possibly expect it life.

It's the in-between. Life in limbo. The promise without the fulfilment. The hope and faith planted and then everything in sight (2 Cor 5.7) saying it's absolutely, assuredly, completely, finally, certainly dead, gone, and done-for. Finished.

The enemy won.

And yet, in this Easter Saturday season, unlike that first Easter Saturday for the Messiah's disciples, I know how the story ends.

"Finished" has an entirely different meaning.

It means

PAID

FULL!

I have the assurance of my Savior. For all eternity I have Jesus, both here on earth, and soon and very soon with Him in Heaven. He will always be right beside me. Filling my cup to overflowing right in the middle of the suffering bringing inexplicable joy (Rom 5.3). That's one of the strangest and most wonderful things about being a Christ follower, don't you think?

It's the joy and the agony of the already and the not yet.

Life is terribly painful, and full of trials and sufferings, and not going anything remotely like I had expected it to go. And yet Jesus saved me. He redeemed me! He wants a personal, vibrant relationship with ME! Hosanna!

Here's something I wrestle with:
Because I believe in Jesus, I have to believe in His power to heal my marriage and my family and bring a completely insane, incomprehensible, nobody can believe their eyes miracle. I have to believe it... whether or not it's something I even want! And at the same time, I need to be completely at peace with the fact that it might not go that way. Ever. And that maybe, just maybe, God actually can and will use the shredding of my marriage and the unresolved pain within my family to His great glory. Because He doesn't waste pain. He works all things for the good of those who love Him. (Rom 8.28)

I must be brave enough to pray ridiculous prayers. Bold prayers. Crazy prayers. Brave enough to pray for things that absolutely can never ever happen without a miracle straight from Heaven. Brave enough to pray for Easter Sunday morning redemption!

Not though but because I am a wrecked, and weak, and incapable of doing any good without Him disciple. And I stupidly repeat the same old junk (Rom 7.15) against my determinations. And I'm terribly ill-equipped to be a single mother, working two jobs, homeschooling, and wanting to help other women in my circumstances. To love everyone I get my hands on. To be Jesus to them. Even though I sin, and blow it, and make mistakes, and hurt others every single day. And I have been known to ugly-cry in public without warning.

And I'm alone. And I'm a hot mess.

Maybe you are, too.

Yet, we are so inconceivably valued by God! He doesn't see me or you in our sinfulness, He sees us clothed in the Risen Jesus Christ! Perfect, sinless, holy, beloved. So, I cannot contain the wonder and the weepy thanksgiving and inexpressible whatever the apex of inloveness is.

It IS finished! In Heaven, all of this is already redeemed! Somehow already fully restored. Only here on earth is it the already and the not yet.

I'm discovering that this journey is much more about learning to walk with Jesus and be willingly shaped into His likeness than anything else, trusting Him for redemption.

"Everything that God brings into our life

is directed to one purpose:

that we might be conformed

to the image of Christ."

Erwin W. Lutzer

"The losses and crosses

are better means to growth in grace

than when everything is according to our liking."

John Wesley

So, yeah, I'm alone. And it hurts. And I am still occasionally walking into walls. I am still stumbling around the patio of life crowded with families and happily married couples.

But, it's still Saturday...

And Sunday's comin'.

"We were crushed and overwhelmed

beyond our ability to endure,

and we thought we would never live through it.

In fact, we expected to die.

But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves

and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead."

2 Corinthians 1.8-9