Easter Tears

Giving ourselves time to cry

Photo by Charlotte Knight on Unsplash

On the calendar, I see it’s Thursday—that day of Holy Week when we remember that terrible, awful night of betrayal, disappointment and disillusionment.   I, too, have these feeling swirling inside of me. These feelings inside are not just because it’s almost Easter, but because of life and death issues I’ve been walking through.

In these weeks leading up to Easter, there’s been too much death it seems. My dear friend—Jeanie died only weeks ago; my brother-in-law--Jerry passed two days ago and my nephew went to bed and never woke up. ‘Gone to soon’, we say.  

Death is such an interruption.

Death ruins our plans for spring break; for seeing friends and family. We see  ourselves at Easter swimming or hiking or hunting Easter eggs but death comes. Death ruins our plans for life. It seems, at first, that death ruins everything.

When I stop for a moment and consider all the “feels” I’m having this week, then I am somehow closer to the “feels” of those who Jesus gathered for a meal and footwashing. Then, there’s “Good” Friday and the long, long wait till Easter morning. In our Sunday School class, a medical doctor told us about the physical aspects of a crucifixion. It was graphic and deeply moving. I almost cried then...but managed to control my tear duct valve. I learned more in that one hour of Sunday school than I did in six years of graduate school studying theology.

We move to swiftly through weeks like this and painful feelings. We don’t like to speak of pain or suffering. It’s too messy. Never you mind, the American church has fixed that by offering Saturday night Easter Celebrations because waiting for Sunday is just so inconvenient it seems. Please spare me of such services. We can’t speed up Easter. Though we try, we just can’t. We can’t speed up our feelings either. We need to feel them…Easter feelings and more.

This week is about feelings, not just historical facts:

Bewilderment.

Anticipation.

Abandonment.

Isolation.

Lonliness.

Grief.

Loss.

Fear.

Death—that final good bye.

It’s far, far easier and culturally acceptable to speak of lilies, chocolate marshmallow eggs (Yum!!!) and budding dogwoods, than it is to share our thoughts and feelings of death.  I am not the exception here, though I would like to be. I’m realizing that grief is something I’m just not good at, it seems.  Please don’t send me links of grief groups.

When my beloved Golden Retriever, Laz died four years ago, I am just now crying about his death. I think I justified bottling my feelings mumbling that I had too much to do to cry over a stupid dog. But, Gwen and I went to see a movie recently. It was a sad one and a true story of children in Europe being hoarded onto trains and shipped off to England during Hitler’s terror. I felt tears flowing down my cheek. But, my tears where not for what I saw in the movie. They were the tears of losing the best dog imaginable. That sad and true story unhinged feelings in me about losing my dog.

All grief is connected to another thread of grief. When one thread of grief is pulled or yanked or felt, then surely, surely, all the threads start moving—stirring feelings long surpressed or stuffed inside. I don’t know how and why this happened. But that it did happen is what I’m thinking about now. It took four years, for those long awaited tears to finally come and it took a sad, true movie to lance my tear ducts to release this liquid gold of love for my dog. It’s okay for you to think me strange. But I don’t think I am alone in still crying for my dog, my own father’s death in 2008 and buring one of my best friends nearly fifty years ago as a young and naive pastor.

Grief is a strange companion. It has a way of breaking through locked doors to find us hiding and protecting our tender hearts. Beware. Grief will not gently knock at your front door waiting to see if you will open the door. No, grief ambushes us. It ambushed Peter when he denied his Lord. It must have ambushed Jesus, himself, when his dear, dear friend, Lazarus died. It will ambush you when you think you have “it” all under control. There is no control of grief.

Though I have been professionally trained and schooled in such matters of darkness and how to help people grieve, I am coming to the conclusion that I am no good at grief. My dear friend recently passed away. I have not cried a tear, yet. My brother in law died two days ago. I have not cried a tear yet for him or my sister’s loss. Maybe I am a delayed processor. It could be. Please don’t send me your list of books on grief.

I will be ambushed I suppose. I was ambushed recently when leading a retreat for 80 people and through beautiful music that was being played, my heart all of a sudden swelled up and tears began to flow—I was going to read a poem but my tears were the first fruits of feeling a deep loss that the violin and piano and harp elicited. Strange. I know. But, ambushed I was. Ambushed or easily moved to tears—you tell me your story and I will tell you mine. We’re all different. But, we all grieve .

I have podcasts, books and poem all already on this subject. I don’t need any more. Spare me the poems of lament as well.  I think what I have needed is time. I have needed enough time to sit quietly and let time do, what only time can do, loosen the grip of the muscles of the heart to let the heart wrench in ache, pain and loss. Some of us, you know, are very good at controlling our hearts to not feel; not cry; not lament; not shed a damn tear.

But this week, 2000, years later, we have another opportunity to be present to our feelings in the wake of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Saturday night vigils and pre-dawn fears that death really might have won after all.  Every Holy Week is a practice lesson in grieving all the losses of our lives and our fears of a broken faith.

As we prepare our hearts in remember the death of Jesus, give yourself some time to just re-read the actual story in a Gospel account. Light a candle. Sit in the darkness. Let the feels come and try to write your own poem or song about your own losses and you own disappointments.

Try not to bring Easter in too early as I have done in my life. Chop. Chop. Hurry. Hurry.

As Gwen reminds me, “Hurry. Hurry” has no blessing.

As we move towards Easter, let’s invite our hearts this year to the table and honor them and celebrate that we can feel at all—even as remedial as some of are at this feeling thing.

May all the feelings of Easter be yours!

Steve