I Hate Sundays (& other pandemic normalities)

[Our son unknowingly created a piece that precisely
depicts the way that I feel in the midst of my own 

grief while still feeling assured that God is with us.
I refer to it often, and took my motherly liberty
of naming it for him: Pandemic Resurrection.]

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Sundays stick to my insides like freshly laid tar. They cling to my muscles and my brain waves. They draw my ribs and lungs much too close together.

I try to worship, but it is usually in vain.

I am thankful that God meets me anyway.

I rage vacuumed today.

That’s right. Rage. Vacuumed.

We had just finished watching a beautifully done worship service by friends in Michigan (Thanks Revs. Elise and Ryan Edwardson!) like we have done every other Sunday of this relentless season of life.

That’s when I felt it.

Bubbling up like an unfortunate inferno with which I am all too familiar.

The anger.
resentment.
stagnancy.
loneliness.
misplaced-ness.
not-enough-ness.

Rather than self-destruct as I have been known to do when similar near-explosions have loomed just beneath the surface of my being, I decided to channel that energy into relieving the living room floor of the past month’s fuzz, dust bunnies, and other miscellaneous particles.

I hated every bit of it.
Slinging toys left and right, away from the wrathful path of the vacuum while my husband and son played at a safe distance on the couch.

Now that I’ve had an hour or so to sit in the aftermath of the rage cleaning, I feel a little lighter. A little less tar-ry.

I’m still feeling degrees of the previously mentioned emotions. Their weight, however, is not as immobilizing, not nearly the degree of nearly-erupting-inferno that they were prior.

Why?

Because, after the rage vacuuming, I stepped away.

Stepped. Away.

From the room
From my son
From my husband

Just for the briefest of moments. And you know what I did?

I changed my clothes (rage vacuuming leads to rage sweating), I turned on some piano music (thanks Erika Scissom!), and I washed my face.

How profound. To feel swallowed up by enormous feelings and just...step away to tend to them.

Now, my heart is back where it belongs:

missing our family
missing our friends
missing our church families
praying for people working in the COVID-19 line of fire
praying for people who aren’t given a choice about going to work
praying for people who are overworked
praying for people who are struggling to pay the bills and put food on the table or both
praying for people who are especially lonely and hurting and hopeless-feeling
desiring a reality where resurrection is a gift felt deep in the bones of all who are weary and desperately in need of new life, abundant

It’s okay to hate some days.
It’s alright to rage clean if that’s what gets you recentered.
It’s necessary to tend to our own heaviness...with the prayerful hope that in so doing we may rise to the exact purpose for which wewere created: tend to the heaviness of others—with nothing short of the compassion, mercy, grace, and love of Christ.

This journey is not linear, folks.
It is winding, twining, warped.

And even so, God is with us.

Be patient with yourselves.
Be gentle with yourselves.
All so that you might be those things and more for those in your midst who are suffering; all so that others may come to know the persistent and prevailing love of God.


That’s the take-away for me today. Maybe it is for you, too.


Deep peace, dear ones.

Pastor Mary Kate