sitting in saturday

sitting in "Saturday"--the messy middle between Good Friday (a crisis, meals in Tupperware, go fund me accounts, memorials, flags flown in wartime) and Easter Sunday (resolution, joy, desired results).  

it seems to me we are good at activating in crisis in order to get to our own relief; or as someone said recently, our culture is like *golden retrievers when it comes to hard things, we are quick to fly the flag in support, but just as quick to forget there's a war going on. *no offense to golden retrievers.

this space in between, this Saturday of the soul, for me is where Real Hope is forged.  not a cheap emotion, but rather the ballast of what it means to be fully alive if we are willing to sit with pain, weather uncertain winter of the heart, and not rush to certainties of spring.  

being with the unknown is an invitation that requires, ironically, our whole self.  but rather than rush to action or placation to distract ourselves from our own discomfort, it asks nothing other than being. and it can be profoundly uncomfortable. being with the unknown, which is perhaps harder than doing, trusting each season will follow in due course.  (and, in the long term, bear the fruit of breaking open to life vs. merely breaking apart).

the heart, being torn--and a muscle--will strengthen, lengthen, stretch and grow in a capacity not possible before the storm that exercised the tear.

grief is the form love takes and is not something to get over, as much as to allow to move us, and to move through us at a pace (often slower than society allows) we can metabolize, both individually and collectively.  

it's ok to wish there was another way around it.  it's ok to not want to say yes to the transformation that comes from pain.  sometimes our only circumstantial choice is the decision to try to be willing to say yes even when we're not ready; to surrender to disorientation itself as the way forward.

how fortunate we are if we have even just one or two faithful companions to sit in Saturday with us.  after the funeral bouquets have dried and mismatched lids from casseroles have been found, the crisis is over and everyone else has gone back to their comfortable business as usual.  

how blessed is the companionable silence of the messy middle.  may you have and may you be a friend for sitting in the Saturdays.

**many of these thoughts i processed on my own while also garnering from brene brown's atlas of the heart