Easter Crap

 “If I could pick one thing, it would be that everyone simmers down on the explanations for other people’s suffering, and just steps in with love.” Kate Bowler

I have a stack of audiobooks that I am working my way through as part of my Lenten journey.

This morning I finished Kate Bowler's book where she chronicles her journey with stage 4 colon cancer. It's worthy of a listen. She's both heartbreakingly authentic and adorably funny.

At one point in the book she says

"Everyone is trying to Easter the crap out of my Lent."

I've been thinking about that quote today.

The idea of trying to "Easter" something up.

It reminds me of the Anne Lamott quote, “We're Easter people, living in a Good Friday world.”

We are a people that avoids the hard.

Goes around instead of through.

We are a people who really struggle with sitting with others in the hard. In the anger. In the grief. In the loss. In the frustration.

Yet we live in a Good Friday world.

For some reason, our instinct is to "Easter it up."

We give out terrible bumper sticker answers. Everything happens for a reason. Or that Jeremiah 29:11 verse. Or God works all things for good. Or, goodness, It could be worse.

Searching for the silver lining always. Or some platitude of one.

I've been wondering today why it's so hard for us to sit in Lent.

To sit in the desert. In the wandering. In the hard.

And even more so, why we struggle with sitting in it with others.

Maybe do we think we are being helpful? Encouraging?

Over the last few months, I've sat in rooms with people who are deeply grieving.

I've noticed that they all apologize. "I'm sorry."

I'm always puzzled by this response. Sorry for being sad? Sorry for being incredibly human? Sorry for having feelings? Sorry for taking up space?

Perhaps we can't sit in our own grief because we feel we aren't worthy of feeling it.

No one has modeled this well for us. No one has shown us how it is to be done.

Mama Warriors, my prayer app for this Lent season has forced me (and I do mean I am being dragged unwillingly) into these sessions of silence.

I'm learning that I talk more than I listen.

I feel the need to fill empty space.

I feel the need to Easter the crap out of a Lenten space.

I'm working on sitting in awkward silence.

Not telling my own story, but just saying "That must be hard."

A hand to hold is better than an empty bumper sticker phrase.

We are all terminal. That's a hard fact to absorb.

We are all desperately human with challenges. That's also a hard fact to absorb.

Let's gift each other grace........to be just that desperately human.

Let's don't Easter the crap up the hard. Let's let the hard be hard, and the Easter be Easter.