The God of Saturdays
As we prepare to emerge out of the Triduum and into Easter, I wonder at Mary and the Apostles - mostly, though, at Peter - watching the lifeless embodiment of their greatest love and hope taken down from the cross. I think about Saturday. That awful day of emptiness and powerlessness. For Peter, especially, a day of torturous regret. A day when answers hide themselves away.
I think about the Saturdays of my own faith. Those days when even the grief that kept me company has numbed and left me with only a burning in my lungs as I struggle against the deep, scrambling to surface and breathe again. The lingering pull of something I love, stolen away from me, held for ransom by despair. I long to pay up. To do whatever it takes to end this standoff. But I turn out empty pockets and stare into a future of uncertainty. I hate those long, unsettling times. I hate those Saturdays.
I have waited out the longest Saturdays of my life looking into the eyes of my children. After divorce, I felt like I failed them. Given the charge to keep them safe, to nurture them, to help them all find Heaven, all I could hear was a ringing accusation telling me I ruined them. On the day before the kids and I left, my husband offered one last parting gift. A prayer. I pray the faces and the cries of our children torment you, he said. As if there were any chance of that not happening.
The divorce was hard on us. It tore at us, but we hung on. Some days, barely. Each of my children went through their own struggle, but the transformation of my oldest daughter was the first to push hard against my faith. She suffered and survived a thousand deaths before the divorce, but this one shifted her from her axis profoundly. She spent many of her days low and dark, a brooding storm in our home. In those rare moments when the sun peeked through, we delighted in her and basked in her humor and kindness. But those days were sparse. She is my stoic child. My anti-teenager who never yelled, who never slammed a door. Whether she were happy or seething, I wasn't always sure. And as a consummate 'fixer,' I drove her crazy with trying to get her to talk to me.
Finally, I followed the prompting of my soul. I let go. I resigned myself to the reality that I cannot cross the finish line for her or for any of my children. I entrusted to God my daughter's heart and her future. I prayed and cried. And I did my best to live my life and my faith without performing, without overdoing it, without trying to lift the curse that was pronounced over me. I had to be my imperfect self and settle into a long and agonizing Saturday, looking into her eyes for a horizon I could not see.
Many of my days have found me bathed in choking sobs over impossible circumstances. Have you ever been there? Longing to see a breakthrough, a change, a light of inspiration or escape? Looking for any sign of grace? The more I struggle against the undertow of those dreadful days, the faster I sink. It is only when I breathe, sometimes into a forced stillness, that peace finally overtakes me. My frantic prayers slow to a quiet Help me. Please.
My most profound heartache remains the knowledge that I am powerless to fix the impossible. My part in this life is to offer the sweet-smelling sacrifice of trust. Like Mary and the Apostles. Like Peter, even in that day of inescapable regret. As I surrender to trust, I can stare down the empty Saturdays of my faith armed with only one assurance: that God is who he says he is. Not that he will answer all my prayers my way, but that he will stay with me through the journey.
I have now watched three of my four children emerge from their own dark night of the soul. I have supported these beautiful treasures as each ventures into finding their rhythm in this life, and I send them out with the directive not to let fear steal their hearts away, especially on those unremitting days when they feel lost at sea. I encourage them, as I have had to remind myself in times of frail faith, to lean on God who will never abandon them, no matter the darkness. The God of Saturdays.