This morning I walked around an empty park that was filled with kids’ laughter and shrieking just a month ago. I pondered about how much life has changed these past few weeks and tried to imagine how we will all come out of this once it ends.

I thought about Easter.

I thought about what this weekend means and what was going on 2,000 years ago on this Saturday.

Then I wondered what today is called. We have Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. But what about the Saturday in the middle? What does today mean? Step after step, I scratched every surface of my brain trying to recall if today had a name. Coming up with nothing, I decided to research later and examine what it means to me now.

What was happening to the people on that Saturday?

Mourning.

Grieving.

Lamenting.

Despair.

Heaviness.

Hopelessness.

Waiting…

For what would be next. For what life would be like again. For something. Anything. Unable to see the final chapter. Inhabited in the waiting.

It made me think of the life we’re in now. We are in the waiting. This pandemic didn’t pause the life we had before and make a new one. It entered our lives right where we were and added all new problems, weights, and worries. This is life in the waiting. We don’t know the finish line, and neither did anyone after Jesus died.

This all reminds me of one of my favorite authors, Glennon Doyle. She’s passionate about reminding us that we can do hard things and how pain is a gift that gives us what we need for what comes next. She often says, “First the pain. Then the waiting...”

Isn’t that the pattern of Easter weekend? The pain of death and then the waiting.

Isn’t that the pattern we’re in now? The pain of our lives being turned upside down and waiting for what is yet to come.

Today is actually called Holy Saturday, and when I learned this, everything I had been examining made perfect sense. There’s a deep holiness in the waiting. A sacredness in lamenting the time between the loss and new life. There’s goodness in the divine protest of what was and the unknown of what will be. The waiting is a necessary and holy metamorphosis our souls must experience to get us to what’s next.

There’s a third line in Glennon’s message:

“First the pain.

Then the waiting.

Then the rising.”

What a beautiful picture of Easter.

Pain. Waiting. Rising.

What a hope-filled promise for our current circumstances.

What a vital reminder for us as we march on and endure in our holy waiting.

A rising is on the way.