A Good Friday One Year Ago

I quickly rushed to church after work on Friday, mind everywhere, a tense day with some tough kids. I remember coming into the dark room, sitting down by myself near the back. There were less people attending than a usual service but still enough to fill spaces. I was aware of where I was sitting, how I was sitting, who was around me, the plans for the rest of my night.

And then, like hearing the striking beauty of a melody I know so well, I was taken back. I stopped. Not just physically, but mentally. I stopped inside.

A girl took the mic, and began to talk about Jesus. But it was a different way of talking about him than I had ever heard before. She didn't speak about what to learn about him or how to live like him.

She simply spoke of him. She talked about his life. She talked about the things he did. She talked about the people he hung out with. She told stories. She spoke about the life of a man who lived on this planet, who ate and drank and slept on this earth. She talked about the ways he laughed and the ways he got angry and the times he cried. She talked about who he was.

And I suddenly felt like I was at his funeral. I felt like he was just here. She spoke like he was just here. She spoke like she knew him. She spoke like she missed him.

Her voice led me into tears. I missed him. I wanted to be with him. His loss was palpable. His loss was weighty. It permeated the room. And strangely enough his absence soon turned into what felt like his presence, sitting right next to me. The absence turned into a presence of a God who was joining me in my tears.

I remember my mind wanting to switch on and say “easy feelings, not too much now, don’t want to draw too much attention.” And then centering back on her voice. And this time my mind didn’t take over. It was too real. This time shame wouldn’t take away such a time to honor. Damn it not this time. Not when you feel like you have the living God sitting next to you, weeping right there with you. Not weeping for you, but weeping with you.

I didn’t want to be wept for. I didn’t want Jesus to have it all together and have to cry for me from some high place. I wanted him to be here, next to the earth, sitting in a chair, weeping alongside me. And that’s what it felt like. It felt like he was sitting next to me, weeping because he wanted to be with me, because he missed being gone, because he knew something of what it meant to feel alone. He knew something of what it meant to live on this earth. He knew what it meant to die on this earth.

This was a time to honor that death. This was a time to weep together over that death.

This was not a day of despair. Tears are not despair. Numbness is despair. A stone-face is despair. Having it all together is despair. Tears are hope. Tears were not the absence of God that day. They were the presence of a God I was weeping with – a God who had died in order for him to be able to sit and weep right next to me at his funeral.

Everything. No, really. Everything.

I get this feeling every time I'm really excited or laugh really hard or let myself simply feel a lot. It is the feeling of expense, the feeling that I am going to exhaust all of my resources, that if I keep this up I will surely run out, left empty with nothing but regret for the frivolous use of who I am. I fear I will run out of desire.

I have this song I've been listening to. It starts off slow, a woman singing in a soft voice, sounding somewhat timid and modest, and then quiets for a bit, her voice softens even more, the music halts.

And then there is an explosion. She screams out, she belts it. Nothing held back. She is in. All of it. There's no worry about expending energy. There's no questioning about breaking rules or being foolish. Just a woman who is all there. Every bit of her, nowhere but the present moment, set on the emotion, the expression, the desire emanating out of a passion in her that says this is worth it.

I was looking back on my journals. There is one in particular, my favorite writing in the past several years. It was written the day after my world was shaken by my counselor, when everything I was learning in the counseling program, everything that was in my head, all the intellect, finally slapped me in the face and slammed into my heart.

That day, I wrote that I was worth everything. I wrote that this work that I would be doing was worth everything. I wrote this work was worth my life. Worth going all in. Worth not looking back. Worth getting bloody, beat up, ticked off, torn up.

Worth dying for. This work was worth dying for. It was worth a life. And I think I felt that because I finally came head to head on with the reality that I was worth dying for. I was worth every bit, every ounce of someone's life. Every ounce of someone's desire. I was not an inconvenience of someone's time, a nuisance with too many needs. Not someone to be avoided, not someone to be silenced. I was worth being sought after, longed, ached, wept for, pursued with a desire that would never run out. Never. I'm talking never. That's what it felt like. It said don't worry because this desire would not be quenched.

It would stay when I was too much, when I said something really stupid, when I sung too loud or awkward or just plain weird, when I wanted to hide because no one wanted to talk to me, when I didn't know what to say, when I did something so shameful I wanted to hide for days. It would stay when I just wanted to be a fucking kid and be goofy as hell. It would allow a fucking kid to be what a kid is, which is spontaneous and unpredictable and full of life and quirkiness and desire.

That is the desire I wrote, the desire that said that you are worth everything. A desire where fuck is a holy word because it carries a desire stronger than shame-based rules.

A desire that would lead to the cross, a desire that would not be quenched even by death. Because I was worth it.

It is easy to say that Christ died for me, but much, much harder to carry the weight, to know the full reality that I am really worth it, That just calls me to way too much glory, way too much possibility, way too much hope. Much easier living a life thinking I am worth nothing than living a life holding an immeasurable glory.