the awful silence of the tomb
And sandwiched in between His dying and rising is this seemingly day of nothing happening...and it has always been my favorite.
Holy Saturday.
It is always on this day of quiet anticipation that my mind floods with what can feel like - if I allow it to - a lifetime of only Good Friday's. My college therapist was the first to teach me about the "anniversary reaction." Easter is one such reaction for me. It was the season that jump started an eating disorder. A season that hung heavy with worry and lack of direction. A season that revealed to my youngest the names of his twenty classmates who without any notice, went straight from a first grade classroom to heaven. And today, it is a season of overwhelming sorrow and joy...sorrow for the dark tunnel I have been been trying to find my way out of, and joy....because, thank you Jesus, I can finally see the small flicker of light.
I suppose if you go through life feeling like each day is Good Friday, you would find great relief in this Holy Saturday. I never really thought about this before. I assumed this day was always a favorite because of the flowers I would buy, and the table I would set, and the baskets I would fill. But as the rain pounds nearly as loud as the pain in my head, a reflection on Holy Saturday in the Magnificat just grabbed a hold of my heart and opened my eyes...that perhaps, it is not really the busyness of the Easter prep that draws me to this day :
"We gain supernatural comfort from the fact that Jesus did not pass instantaneously from death to the Resurrection, that he did not skip over the loneliness, sadness, or fear that death introduces to the world, our families, and eventually into our own lives when each of us will lie lifeless. Holy Saturday braces our hearts with a most consoling truth: Even in the painful silence and cold of death Jesus is with us."
And as I continue to be still with the Lord, to stay silent so that I can hear Him speak, His words to me are as loud and fierce inside, as the rainstorm on the other side of the glass..."all those times on your closet floor crying out to me...all those times at the foot of the cross in an empty church curled up small and in anguish...all those times driving alone in tears begging for it to all just end...all those times when there was nothing but chaos and fear and confusion and the certainty that I was nowhere to be found...I WAS THERE."
For years I believed the silence - the incredible and hard lack of response from my Lord - meant that this was it. Life was forever misery filled. That nothing would change. But that is not it at all, is it? The silence? The waiting? That was never about Jesus leaving me. That was never about Jesus skipping over my fear and great sadness. That was about Jesus entering into the tomb; stepping directly into the pain and meeting all of the mess head on, so that He could feel it, too.
If you have been living a life of Good Friday's, know that today, I am praying for you. Know that today, the silence you hear is not God ignoring your circumstance...but quite the opposite. Know that today we can shout out with the very last bit of strength, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46) and still be certain that we will not hang on this cross forever.
His silence is our victory.
His wait is worth it. We know how this story ends.
