Easter

Easter is not an easy holiday. It is gritty and raw. Every year I gain a new piece of why there is only pain and a rawness in my soul. Here's this year's piece:


For two days you ask me to journey deep into the darkest recesses of my soul. Just as I settle into the wonder and the weeping, you show up. Emotional whiplash. I'm not ready to rejoice.  There is more here in the dark. More that needs to be felt for, discovered, grieved over before it can be unearthed. I'm not ready for resurrection.

The light is too bright for the rawness that is my ravaged heart. I find myself face down, eyes streaming, begging to go back to the darkness. The work you were doing in those hidden places, it mattered. Now the light has chased away my shadows, the fleeting pieces of my jagged edges. I've lost them, yet again. These snatches of untold story that were starting to unfold. The sudden light has shoved me into painful unseeing once more.

I'm not ready to rejoice, to sing songs of relief and gladness. I'm still back in the remembering. My eyes had adjusted to seeing the beauty and nuances of the darkness. I cannot grieve for you one day only to turn around and embrace with whole-hearted ecstasy this supernatural gift. This fleeting gift of your presence here. Far too soon you will leave and retreat to this glorious world outside time that you left for only a short while. Your transient life makes me retreat back into my darkness, alone, but for the half light of a spirit, your spirit that allows my weary soul to dimly see the next step along my road.