I grew up in a Catholic/atheist hybrid sort of family. Easter was always magical for me but not because of the brightly colored eggs, the traditional Mass, or even our annual viewing of Andew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. I think it was because it was the one day of the year when I could embrace my true identity – a fairy princess.

My mother would spend months sewing dresses for us each year. I think my 8 th Easter boasted the most beautiful one. Turquoise blue, it fell in layers with petticoat after petticoat in a flouncey mess of color with a sash around the waist that I tied a little too tight, because all the Disney princesses had cinched in waists. It didn’t have quite the same effect on my tubby belly, but in my eyes I was transformed.

I became a Christian at 20, and Easter shifted in a sudden startling moment. In my teenage years I had spent the season exploring springtime resolutions and prideful self-control through my own non-spiritual version of Lent. Suddenly it became an overwhelming passion; a devastating and extravagant expression of love.

I feel pretty confident that I should never recover from the Cross. I feel sure that each Easter should come upon me with the same wonderment and crushing awe as that first one. Sometimes the world rubs at you though and places that were once sharp become dull. Edges become rounded and the mystery and glory of what happened two thousand years ago is shortened and boxed into simple self-contained phrases like “Christ died for my sin” – packaged with intonation that once resonated and echoed in your heart, but is now just an imitation of passion.

So I meditate and prayerfully ponder those events recorded for me in His word. This year, Easter is collapsing over and over in my mind, and wreaking havoc with my complacency.

Thursday's Anguish

On Thursday nights I watch The Office and Grey’s Anatomy. It’s the best TV night of the week, in my opinion. A couple of weeks ago, I watched Meredith Grey walk towards death. I actually sobbed. Even after the show ended I still couldn’t hold it together. I lay in my bed and cried. No. I am not proud of this. Yes. I am a self-professed dork.

If I’m honest, Jesus’ last Thursday night sometimes plays for me like a TV drama. It reads like some story or movie or rumor or legend. Sometimes the idea that Jesus was a real man, who spent a real Thursday night in anguish, is faint and foggy and out of reach to me.

I used to have this roommate who shined the light of Christ into my life every time I looked up. At the beginning of this year, she moved away. At the same time, another friend – the kind who reminds you why we were created for community – she left too. And two more friends followed after them. I didn’t really process that they were all leaving at the same time, until they were all gone at the same time. Two left for the mission field in Africa, one for an internship in Houston, and one for an around the world excursion (she’s currently in Bali).

In January, I was shaky but staying afloat somehow in the wake of their departure. Then another wave hit me. While I was at the end of myself, I found out someone else who is like family was leaving and everything kind of caved inwards. And I left our beautiful church on a Sunday evening, and I sat in my car and I cried out to God in confusion.

I remember feeling angry. Maybe angry that I was created for community; at times that knowledge leaves me with a sense of entitlement to be in community with certain people. Maybe angry because of this stupid fallen world that falls so short of the Glory of His face that I long for. Maybe angry because it seems like loneliness and sorrow should have evaporated when I began to believe in the sufficiency of God.

And maybe that’s why I cried as I watched Meredith Grey fight the separation of death. Because I’m tired of goodbyes. I’m tired of division and fractured relationships. I’m tired of not always feeling the truth that I believe.

But Meredith isn’t real. Her pain isn’t real.

I want to believe. I want to believe the pain of that last Thursday night that’s painted for me in the Bible.

I want to see Jesus that night, and not just in film stills with cheesy music in the background. I want to see Him as He was. When he confessed to His best friends that He was falling apart; His soul was overwhelmed to the point of death. When He asked them to pray with Him. When He fell on the ground on His face and begged the Father for a different way. I want to see His face as He tilted it heavenward with blood coming out of His skin because of the sheer weight of the path He was to walk.

I want to hear Him, as He cried out to the Father in the intimate name ‘Abba’: Daddy. Daddy, save me.

Hebrews tells me that I do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with this mess of pain and loneliness that I find myself in so often. I have, in Christ, someone who gets it.

That Thursday night gives me faith to approach His throne anticipating mercy and grace. Because my God knows. He knows the pain of friends who fall asleep, and the pain of the obedience to the Father’s will far better than I could ever understand.

.fabienne harford

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