We’ve just celebrated the Second Sunday in Easter [which my congregation did in fabulous, joyous, hilarious fashion this morning!], but if you’d like to find me, I’m stuck back in Holy Saturday.

I never thought about the day between Good Friday and Easter morning until I started seminary- not once. To be honest, I think I was just too busy to think about it. My world kept spinning on at the same speed and didn’t stop to enter the strange space that the grieving inhabit. Life and death are undeniably part of the same reality again, and the colors of life look very different- like the surreal coloring that comes with a storm of Tornado potential. The disciples had to begin to feel and grapple with their grief- not something that could or should be avoided.

This year, I felt very keenly in the depths of my soul when people declared ‘Happy Easter!’ or ‘Sunday’s coming!’ anytime before the arrival of Easter morning. I need the declaration and promise of resurrection, or this story or life of ours is for naught.That’s why I crave the jokes, laughter, uplifting stories, and beauty to behold.

But to skip Good Friday and the waiting and grieving of Saturday is false. It’s emphasizing only new growth without death. Do you know what happens when there is growth without necessary pruning and death?

Cancer.

But here I am in Holy Saturday.

It’s been a really strange space to inhabit. It’s bizarre to have to hurry up and wait for some things, and for other parts of time slide through my fingers without awareness (the entire evening feel like twenty minutes..). I’ve dealt with chronic health issues my whole life and I did life just fine, excellently even, despite them. I have felt like I have had great self-awareness in judging my mental and physical state for getting work done- and it’s always gotten done. But for the past three weeks my brain has been operating in first gear. I can’t process and work the way that I have my entire life.

Many recently have commented on my strength and faith in this time, but I have to tell you, it’s not mine. When you are helpless, you have to cling to the strength of another. It’s only when the recovery has begun that the itching at the bandages and the complaining begins- and you’re in danger of thinking that you’re in control of your healing.

I messed up by reading the document found on the Duke website on liver transplantation before going to meet with the liver transplant team. There was some good information that I needed to hear, but I should’ve stopped before the last set of pages. Reading that after transplant, you are transported to Surgical ICU where they outfit you with an IV (of course), a tube running down your nose to your stomach to suck out stomach acid until your stomach and intestines are ready to work again, a catheter, and those bizarre leg things that squeeze your legs to make sure you don’t get blood clots, I was mentally laid low. That is utter helplessness. Even as a newborn I could breathe and urinate on my own. I’ve been already grieving that utter helplessness even before it’s certain that I can have a transplant. I think I’ve been pre-grieving this state. I think I’m grieving in other ways too. One way I’ve identified is the loss of being self-aware in my working. It’s frustrating to not be able to work in the same ways that I’ve worked well before. I know that we’re human be-ings and not human do-ings and my worth does not come from my work, but it’s nice and satisfying to do things. But I have realized, and am realizing, that I am already helpless. I am already, and indeed made to be, dependent on the real source of life. I know all those things and have lived into them in some ways, but there is grieving and pruning to do to participate in abundant life that can’t be avoided.

When I was a kid and got sick to my stomach, there was nothing better at that time of utter lack of control and helplessness than to feel the cool, strong hand of my mom holding my head up and her help to stand and swish out my mouth. The state of my helplessness almost didn’t matter in that moment- what mattered was her presence and the cool hand. For those who look on me and see strength- it is the strong, cool, healing hand of God that you’re seeing, not me. The pain and confusion and anxiety, while present, have really faded into my background a bit or been numbed. But really I continue to see and reach out for that cool hand and cup of water. No, it is not right or wanted by God or anyone else for me to be in this space of sickness, but that’s not what is important to me right now. What is? The sips of cool water that are being in the Duke Healthcare system already, a pathologist that knew enough to find and name my condition, cancer confined to my liver and living in a time where transplantation is even a thing, the Affordable Care Act that limits my out-of-pocket medical expenses, being past the core courses at Duke Divinity that are especially exhausting and tedious, my sweet husband’s care, having great support networks among family, friends, clergy colleagues, church family, and the Divinity School, cups of soup and other offerings from the ones who love me.

 

So no, I am not scared, I am at peace. But it’s not my peace, it’s not my faith, it’s not my hope- it belongs to God, and I’m simply giving into (or trying to) my state of helplessness and dependence. I am NOT excited, but I am not filled with fear. In the Garden, Jesus prayed for the cup to pass- he wasn’t excited to drink in death and despair- it’s awful on a much greater scale than drinking magnesium citrate. This God, whose hand I am resting in, is not a God who waves a ‘magic wand’, or who avoided Good Friday. This is the Good Shepherd that seems to demonstrate the only way to deal with these things is to go through them to the other side. Saturday isn’t bypassed either. There is painful and itchy grief and healing in this place, but also cool hands and cups of water. The waiting and the healing is frustrating, but I know moving too quickly means that I won’t fully heal, or causes new, uncontrolled growth that got me to this place to begin with. I think God will set the right pace through the valley.