holy mourning

I have never spent much time thinking about Holy Saturday. It is the ordinary day sandwiched between the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter Sunday. Here it sits: ordinary, overlooked Saturday. There are no special church services. There are no celebrations. It is just here - the space in between. The space where Jesus was in the grave. 

I realized this morning that this ordinary, sandwiched Saturday has a very important lesson to teach. It teaches us about waiting. This space on Saturday is the waiting space. It is the space for grief.

I have a confession: I am a bad mourner. I crack jokes to break up tears, jokes that usually aren't funny and just lead to awkwardness. I try to move past grief. I don't want to be sad because the world tells me that sadness is wrong. If I'm not happy all the time then something is wrong with me. And let's face it, who really wants to be sad? Who wants to grieve? Who wants to lament? 

A couple of years ago now, I was moving on with my life in happy fashion, and all of a sudden, I was plunged into a season of mourning. It was unwanted, and I never saw it coming. I had never experienced such deep, soul-wrenching sorrow for such an extended period of time. I really had no idea what to do in this season. All I could do was cry out to the Lord. I was so broken, I couldn't even try to move past the grief. 

So I did what no one wants to do. I sat with it. I waited. I learned that we are quick to move past our grief. We are too quick to move on. The initial sorrow abated slowly, but still my heart felt broken beyond repair, my soul felt shaken. In the months that followed, I learned what it means to lament.

Lamentation is the prayer of the grieving one. It is the cry to God to see the brokenness. Lamentation gives us access into a special part of God's heart, the part of His heart that is broken, the part of His heart that mourns and laments. Lamentation is the only way to enter that door.

Anyone who has grieved will tell you that a person who sits with you in your grief has a special place in your heart. When we lament, we sit with God in His grief. We sit in the place of brokenness and we just allow it to be. We sit in the grief space, the in between space, the waiting time. We wait on the lamentation to do it's work. 

What a beautiful privilege to join with God in His grief! I am a very private griever. I don't allow many people into my grieving space. I love to share my joys, but not my sorrows. The same is not true of God. He wants us to come into this space, to see His brokenness, to sit in the place where He mourns. He wants us to draw close to Him, to know His heart. 

But to know this part of His heart, we have to be willing to embrace the time in between the shock of sorrow and the redemption of that sorrow. We have to be willing to wait in the brokenness. This is what Holy Saturday reminds us to do; it reminds us to make space for our grief, to wait in our mourning, to take time to lament.