I Don’t Know How

I feel like I don’t know how to do Good Friday well enough.

It feels like when I love someone so much that I want to celebrate them so big, but nothing seems big enough to match the crazy affections of my heart, so I do almost nothing because I am paralyzed to do anything. It feels like that.

Nothing is enough awareness, gratitude, soul shifting. It feels like nothing could be.

It’s a day for remembering. So then, what December 23 is to my first husband Robb, so Good Friday is to the savior of my soul… except the metaphor breaks down in all the real ways. I get it. Don’t sent me hate mail, please. I know it’s not the same. But both are days for remembering and recalling, for honoring.

Maybe I compare them because I know how to feel about Robb’s day. I don’t know what to do with the day that belongs to Jesus. I’ve never really known, I guess.

In Too Deep for Words, Thelma Hall wrote, “‘To suffer’ means to undergo, to endure, to bear. In this sense, there are times when we need to go no farther than enduring and bearing with ourselves, with patience and compassion.”

Maybe I can this day by being patient with my own inadequacy, my own imperfections, my own impatience, my own compassion fatigue.

I imagine the people in his circle saying, “Where were you that day? What was it like for you?” Maybe they still ask each other that question, as they recall and remember. There is healing in telling the story a thousand times, and I wonder if the men Jesus loved still gather to tell and remember and heal and love again.

One time at our dinner table, we talked about what we want to do when we meet Jesus.

Peter wants to ask him what it was all about.
Tyler wants to know if we get to sit with him individually, or if he’s like the celebrity of heaven and we all follow him around hoping to get a glimpse.
Tucker wants to throw a baseball with him.
I want to hear him laugh.

(Truth be told, I want to make him laugh.)

But sometime, someday, I want to sit down and remember with him. I want to say, “What was it like, though, for you?”