I don’t usually post on the weekends.
But this weekend. This Easter weekend. This Saturday of Easter weekend is always the saddest day to me.
It’s the waiting day.
The day when we hope, but the day when we also sit lost in the sadness and confusion of the disciples who thought hope was dead. Beaten and nailed to a tree. This is the day that makes sense of the darkness. The day where we live. The in between day.
This is a hard day.
This is a day that makes sense of my story.
I live on Saturday. This day where I am so desperately aware of what I would be without a Savior. This day where my humanity feels heavy and lost and angry without promise of rescue. This day that explains why it’s hard not to snap at the kids I love. How tempers fray and sometimes it feels good to just let ’em loose. This day in between the cross and the promised future Kingdom we live in the tension of waiting. I feel it in my gut every Easter Saturday, how hard and busted the waiting is.
Two days ago one of my boys tells me he peed on the deck. Well not really the deck, he admits. But into the little tiny treasure cubbie of his little sister’s play table. He walks me out and points to the pond that by some miracle she hadn’t discovered. I actually go speechless. I’m like a gibbering fool. I’ve just walked through the door with eggs for dying and cake for baking and now all I want to do is wring his neck. I want to pull him up by his ears and ask him through hissing breath what could have possessed him to such foolishness.
I am hot lava and he stands, watches me with big eyes, as it pours out of me. Turns out I have plenty of words.
This is Saturday life. This is Savior dead and buried and no hope of resurrection living. I don’t want to be a Saturday woman.
I catch that wild tongue of mine. It nearly takes both hands. But I catch it and slow it down and send that boy to the bathroom with a bottle of bleach spray and a bucket and I make him do the chore I like the least. He cleans the toilet and the sink and the tiles and in between each wipe we find our way back toward each other.
I scrub alongside him and there down on my hands and knees with paper towel dredging the dirt out of the grout I see myself reflected back. How I am. The inside me. I can scrub and clean all I like but ain’t nothing going to clean what’s going on in my head or my heart. I need a Sunday Savior.
I’m stranded on Saturday and I’ve got boys that disrespect me the next day and the day after right fresh in between their declarations of love. Right the next moment they’re laying on the hiding and the lies and I’m grabbing at clenched fists again and galloping away at the rate of my tongue. This is no way for living. This is no way for family or getting it right or making sense of where we’re all headed. This is Saturday living.
I threw away a silver ring by accident last night. I didn’t know it was a ring. I realized when it was much too late. A whole day’s worth of dirty towels from cleaning the bathroom were layered over old food and left over macaroni and I had to sift through it for what was precious to me. It was slow going. There was the wrapper from the tulips I’d bought, and the avocado pit and the cut up paper Zoe had shredded. There were the old tea bags and several dirty diapers. I went through it all with my bare hands.
This is Saturday living.
I’m on my knees, here with all my garbage, waiting for a Sunday Savior.
Thank you! I love this. I don’t love that you had to dig through the garbage, but, you know what I mean, I think.
What beautiful words. Thanks for the opportunity to reflect.
Oh man. I get this. And I love the truth of it. The ugly reality that shines anyways because of our Sunday savior, who thankfully, is also around the other 6 days of the week. I need Him every hour.
Oh friend… I am waiting here with you… knees bent, palms open and waiting…
I feel as though I have been in the garbage all week. Your words say it best.
Praise God He forgives and we have a Savior who redeemed us out of the pit. Christ is Risen!
I get this too. I never understood why the anxiety of Saturday evening disappears on Sunday morning…now I get it !!!
And, here we are, waiting with tears of sadness and anticipation, not quite comprehending the immense love that our Savior had/has for us…still living and going through the motions, with a heavy, yet joy-filled heart. The wonders of the human soul when filled with the Holy Spirit, is complex and beautiful. I’m sitting, right here, with you. Just waiting and trying to be mom to my teenage son and 22 year old son. My husband understands and shares my feelings, but I still think that this day is lonely and full of despair. I know the outcome is filled with joy, hope and love, but I still hurt, too. Saturday living.
thank you. you put beautiful words to my blundering feelings. so good to know that i am not the only one who has to grab my tongue with both fists sometimes…
Thanks, Lisa, for reminding this mom that she is not alone on the confusing path of raising boys. :)
Exactly! This is it every single year for me. I live this day filled with confusion and wondering for those that were there 2000 years ago, but for me and How I mess it up even knowing the rest of it. I’m part of that wild-tongued sisterhood of ear yankers. We shall commiserate and encourage each other on this rocky road.
Lisa-Jo, you’re not alone. Why is it so easy to love a stranger (an enemy, an unknown), yet so hard to love the beloved child who gives lip-service of “I love you, Mommy” with disrespectful actions to the left and right. And I wonder, “Am I teaching her love and respect enough?”; “Am I just giving her lip-service when I tell her I love her?” That it’s the week of Easter makes it so much harder to look at my motherhood and see how much I need the Christ in me.
How beautiful your words, describing the pain of Holy Saturday. The feelings are all there – the apostles who cried or not, the women who waited, not knowing what was next. I’ve been in your shoes with a child who confesses, but who I don’t truly understand what made him do what he did. A long time ago, but still fresh in my memory. How much I want this day to be over, so we can wake to a New Beginning. The day when Christ rises from the dead and our sins have been removed from us. A New Beginning. Another Chance to be one with the Lord. Your words are so inspiring. Thank you!
Ouch. I know moments like this. The pee discovery moments. Oh dear. The familiarity and the humanity resonate. They hurt. It’s so hard to see who we are in those moments, and to wonder who is this little person who is capable of such weird, awful, dishonest grossness. I just don’t know what to do then. It is the Saturday life, isn’t it? Thank you for this raw moment. You just put into words how we all feel.
You speak truth…ugly truth to which I can relate. Relate more closely than I would like. Thank you, Lisa Jo…thank you.
SO beautiful and the most touching part for me, HE told you what he had done. Which is a true confession. He could have hid it and not told. You have taught him, to confess on some level and it was through your teaching and your holding back the wrath where he will see Jesus. He knew wrong. He knew the truth of telling. He learned it was powerful on many levels.
Good job.
Wow! I’ve never thought of it like this before, but “Saturday living” is very familiar to me. What an accurate description of my day-to-day living…Often forgetting the wonderful moments of the past, and hope for tomorrow hidden behind the challenges of this in-between time. This in-between time that seems to drag on too long, that seems to be the only existence. I am humbled and ashamed of my forgetfulness, like the disciples who fell asleep while Jesus prayed in the garden. Thank you for the glorious reminder that my Jesus is a “Sunday Savior”!
Interesting that I sat down to my computer and read this just after losing my patience with my husband over the care of his burned leg. All day dealing with him has been trying on me. He honestly can’t help getting fussy when he’s not feeling well or is frustrated with himself (he has a lot of residual effects of a major stroke 2 1/2 years back). Sometimes, I have to get brutally honest with him to get him to calm down and I hate myself for it afterwards. Anyway, the point is, when I read what you’d written Lisa-Jo, it hit home and made a lot of sense to me. Thank you for putting into words what I didn’t understand about myself and reminding me of the why of the day.
Yes. Don’t we all stumble around in the brokenness of our Saturday. Thankful that Sunday comes!
Weet jy wat is Saterdag? Saterdag is self probeer. Ek weet, want dis my lewe.
n Harde lewe van probeer om bo te bly, soos om n strandbal onder water te druk en hom daar te hou. Uitputtend. Daar’s geel en blou en rooi, pers – my onmoontlik veeleisende werk, my seuns se opvoeding, verhouding met my man, gemeentelede…en een of ander tyd word my arms net te moeg, is die bal net te glibberig, skiet hy onder my uit, slaan hy my onder die ken en spat my gesig vol water. Elke keer.
Elke keer behalwe op Sondae. Sondae is deel en speeldae. Op Sondae onthou ek om nie die bal af te forseer en so hard te probeer om bo te bly nie. Op Sondae vat ek hom met twee hande en gooi hom hoog oor my kop na Sy hande wat dit veilig vang. As ek laat los sien ek hoe mooi die kleure van my lewensbal is, hoe alles saam spin in n pragtige patroon, hoe die bal in sorgvrye spel tot sy reg kom. Ek leer stadig, Lisa, maar daar is oomblikke waarin ek WEET ek hoef nie rekenskap te gee van hoe goed ek in my selfopgelegde take geslaag het nie, dat ek minder hard op myself is want ek besef die vraag sal wees: “Was jou vreugde in Hom?” My bede: Mag ons meer en meer speeldae hê. XxM
Lisa-Jo,
I just found you! I am at a loss for words right now….because, you see, I feel the same on this Saturday (which is now Sunday). I am going to dive into your blog posts, and read some of your recommended books. You spoke to my heart on this heavy day. On a week, month, year, of heavy years of mothering….God led me to you on this Holy weekend, and I am truely grateful. Blessings to you and your family this weekend! HE IS RISEN! look forward to learning more about you!
I really got it this Saturday, the sense of bewilderment that the disciples must have felt, and you’ve put it into lovely words.
I relate. I needed this. Thank you!
Lisa-Jo,
Thank goodness for Easter. We all fall short, but Jesus covers us. I went to see an Easter play and I cried as I watched Jesus heal people. To watch it on the stage, was like I was there, back then, seeing it with my own eyes. It made me think of how Jesus has saved and healed me in spirit.
Thank you for your post. Saturday is over. Sunday is here! Praise God!!!!!
Lisa…straight to the heart…thank you for being real and speaking truth. Phrase God the tomb is empty and the waiting is over!
Thank you for this post! I think these are my favourite ones to read…the ones about how messy (sometimes literally!) real life is and how we muddle through and try to do better the next time around. Saturdays are hard, PTL that we serve a Sunday God!
(Sunday God…that doesn’t look quite right! Not to say God’s not present the rest of the days of course…but rather that what He walks through with us on Saturdays was covered by what He did on Resurrection Sunday! :) And THAT is what I’m thankful for!)
Can I just say I love your writing!!! And your acceptance of the imperfection of life, because we are all fallen and we all need a Savior. May we ever keep seeking that Jesus, because trying our best is all he asks!
Beautiful. Just beautiful!