It's almost Easter

• It's coming on Easter and I'm hanging in waiting.
• There is a kind of grief that proceeds this holy day, if you let it in. And I admit I don't like it.
• Not one bit do I like this pre-Spring anticipation. I want to. But I absolutely do not.
• This is the season before the beauty comes. Where we prepare and wait and wonder. But new life has not sprung yet. The dark is still here even as the blades of grass and the buds on the trees hint at what is to come. It's raining. It's cold. There will be a death to consider before there is life.
  
• If I am really trying to enter into the amazing miraculous holiness of the season - I enter into this thing called Lent.
• I do not like Lent. Yes, mark it down and chat amongst yourselves. Karen Rogers is NOT a fan.
• Even the mention of it at staff meetings or the sudden planning of an Ash Wednesday service puts me on defense. It's coming. That amazing day that is the pinnacle of the year and of my faith. But it will not come without a cost.
• This season represents more pain than I care to write about. Simply put, a lot of loss has happened during these months in my life. The same months, for many years, have been very painful. So that just complicates Lent i think for me.
• And yet, I feel compelled, even inspired to engage in what it must have been like to walk with Jesus during those final days and hours to the cross.
• How is this Lent season for you I wonder? Because for me it is downright awful. I cry more during this season. Am kind of depressed. Usually confused wondering what is wrong with me and why I'm so hormonal.
  
• One year I watched Mel Gibson's The Passion. 2wice. I bawled my face off both times, the first time my head in my lap in the theater crying uncontrollably after the lights had come on. The images still ring in my view when I allow them in.
• I see His face a lot lately. Glimpses just. Maybe even a sound or a thought. Is He hurting? He looks sad. I feel His heart beating in mine, and I shiver. Can I hear Him breathing?
• It's coming. And I cannot stop it. He's going to die all over again and I've been asked to relive it. Year after year.
• Sacred. Holy. He was alone. He did something I will never understand. It hurts to think about it. To let it in is painful. A revisiting of my own hurts. But moreover - an entering into His.
• I can NOT understand why Christ would die for us, for me. It is utterly God to do such a thing so absurd and sacrificial.

And then there is Easter. It is coming and I feel it's warmth on my skin even as I am grieving. To consider Easter answers the begging question I have of why in the world He did what He did. It is so obvious and so wonderful. A few years ago I came across this passage. I'm sure I'd read it many times before but that year, something came over me intensely as I realized for the first time what it was to really take in the resurrection, after the grief of His death.

Now it is my every year passage that brings me to His feet in both His death, and His forever life that beats in me. May it bring a similar joy to you in the depth of your being as you read. There is something indescribable and humbling about being truly known, and hearing His voice. I am doing my best to enter into this Lenten grief right now. But I am very much awaiting Easter morning when I hear Him call my name and remember what He has done and how very much alive He is, and we all are.

Peace to you as you do your own dealings with Lent.

John 20:10-18 (New International Version)

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

¹⁰Then the disciples went back to their homes, ¹¹but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹²and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

¹³They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"

"They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." ¹⁴At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

¹⁵"Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him."

¹⁶Jesus said to her, "Mary."
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).

¹⁷Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "

¹⁸Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!" And she told them that he had said these things to her.