Leanne Friesen

Last week Dallas was away at a conference and I experienced eight days of single parenthood.  I cannot pretend that I can understand the life of a single parent after my mere week of going solo; however, I am thankful each time I “go it alone” that I’m given a glimpse into the journey of many people that I love.   I look at single parents with a new-found respect and admiration. They are my Olympic heroes. They are my marathon runners. They are the people that make me say “How do they do that?”

In the Bible God talks a LOT about helping out those who need support.  A frequent admonishment to God’s people is to help “widows and orphans.”  In the Ancient world, the number of young mothers who had lost husbands to war, disease and tragedy was much higher than today.  I think we are still supposed to support widows and orphans, but I also think that today we can broaden that category to include the single parent.  They are also journeying as parents without the support of a partner beside them.

One thing that I appreciated this week was the number of people who made an effort to encourage me and help me out.  They made me think about ways that I can support people for whom this journey of single parenting is long term.  Here are some of things that I got to thinking that we all could do:

1. Meals

Twice this week friends had us over for dinner.  This blessed in me three ways.  It meant I didn’t have to cook. It meant I didn’t have to clean up afterwards. It meant I had some connection time with adults.  I think it is a huge blessing to either give a meal, or gifts cards for a meal, to a parent with young children.  I think inviting a family for a meal is very special.  It builds connection and is a special break from routine.  Is there a family that you know that you could love with food during this Mother’s Day month?

2.  Housework/Jobs

A great gift for a single parent would be the gift of a cleaner.  Another blessing is to offer support with specific tasks, such as yard work, or snow shoveling.  The author Anne Lamott wrote about being a new single mom and being asked the question: “Think of the one job in your house you don’t want to do right now and I’ll do it.” She picked cleaning the bathroom.   Can you call up a single parent and offer to do one task for them?  Remember to be specific. Saying “I’m here if you need me” rarely gets a response. People don’t want to ask.  Call and say “I have an hour on Tuesday evening. Tell me what you’d like me to do.”  OR  “I am coming to clean out your yard.  I’ll be there on Saturday afternoon.”

3. Childcare

Well this one is a no-brainer, but so important!  Parents need help with childcare so that they can get errands done, go to work, etc.  But I think one of the things a single parent needs most is time for them.  Offer to babysit so they can go to a movie or get a coffee or just go for a walk.  Or take their kids so they can stay home and nap. And, again, if you can, be specific. Tell them a night you are available.  Don’t make them ask you if you can offer first.

4.  Company

Because there is not a partner to watch children in the evenings, some parents miss adult company.  Instead of asking a single parent out to dinner or coffee, offer to stop by after the kids are in bed and bring a snack to share.  Take the pressure off them having to find a sitter.

5. Encouragement

You know what all parents worry about?  If they are doing a good job.  For single parents, I think it must be even harder, without the support of someone encouraging them in their house.  When you see a single parent give them a pat on the back.  Tell them you see they are doing well.  Encourage them every change you can.

Bonus:  For church folks:

1. Leave the parking

You know who finds it hard to get to church on time on Sunday mornings?  Single parents.  You know who finds it hardest to cross a busy street?  Single parents. If there is a spot in our parking lot on a Sunday morning and you are able bodied, instead of thinking “Yay! A spot for me!,” think: “Yay!  A spot for a single parent!  I’ll leave it for them.”

2. Leave the seats

You know who finds it hard to get into church before the service starts?  Single parents. You know who finds it most stressful to have to walk to the front looking for a seat with kids in tow? Single parents. Leave the back and aisle seats for them.

3.  Be the village

You know the expression “It takes a village to raise a child?”  Let’s be the village for our kids with single parents. This means that we can make a special effort to say hello to children and get to know their names. It also means we can watch out for them.  Help a single parent enjoy their coffee after church by offering to keep an eye on their kids.

And, of course, love them, pray for them, be there for them.

Because we are more than a village. We are a family.  And none of us who are in a church should ever feel we are on our own in parenting.  Instead, let’s help create an environment where children are blessed to abundance with parents, grandparents, friends and siblings – where no one feels “single” or even “orphaned,”  but we all feel that we belong to the great big family of God.

When I was done I thought: I need to know what an actual single parent thinks. I asked one of our single moms to add to this discussion. Here are some thoughts from Melissa Robertson, mom of Silas (6), Sloan (2) and Micah (2 weeks!!!):

As a single mother of 3 boys, I would agree with everything that Leanne has experienced over the last week and written about in this post. It IS tough. But it IS also infinitely rewarding. The one thing in this post that really resonated with me personally was if you want to offer something to a single parent (or any new parent, or any person in need), it is best to be specific. Not only is it hard for someone (and me, in particular) to actually take a person up on their wonderful offer to ‘help out somehow’, it is sometimes just one more thing to think about in an already full day/ week/ life. It is so wonderful when someone says “I’ve made you some food- I’m stopping by with it this afternoon”. I also fully endorse Leanne’s idea of hiring a cleaner!

But please also realize that being a parent, and especially a single parent, is emotionally and physically exhausting- so be aware and gracious with them if they take a while to get back to you. Or, if they are feeling too overwhelmed at the moment to take you up on your thoughtful offer. Know that they are eternally grateful for you and your thoughtfulness, even if they can not take you up on your generosity at the moment. Just knowing people are thinking/ caring about you means so much. I am SO blessed to have so much love and support in my life. And I am so thankful for my faith, that I believe is stronger as a single parent than it has ever been. God has become my partner, my confident, my friend. I am blessed.  – Melissa

Would you like to weigh in?  Do you agree or disagree with these ideas?   What have you found helpful as a single parent? What would you like people to understand?  

 

 

 

After a week of preparing for Easter together, I feel like I should write more about how it went.

I did say in the early hours of Easter morning that I was ready to celebrate, and some of you may wonder: Did you?  Was it okay?  Was the joy that you anticipated actually there? (Of course, some of you may not have wondered at all, but, you know, I’m into closure. So here I write).

There was joy.

There was joy (though a little hard to muster at first) when my kids woke us at 6 a.m. and we watched them hunt for jelly beans and Lilliput eggs all around the house.  There was joy every time they screamed at a new and, apparently, hilarious hiding spot  (Easter eggs on the stairs?? HYSTERICAL!).

There was joy when the sun was shining and we sat outside and drew Easter eggs with side walk chalk on the driveway with our neighbours. There was joy as Josiah and I rode our bikes around the block. There was joy as we ate dinner with friends and toasted together proclaiming “He is risen!”

And there was joy every time someone told me – in person or through a comment or a facebook message –  that the blogs last week meant something to them, that they had helped them, that they had been journeying with me. Knowing that something good can come out of the hard stuff always brings me joy.

But my very very very favourite was church on Sunday morning.  Friends, there was JOY.  First of all, a few of the faithful had spent a hunk of Good Friday decorating for us, and it looked like a party.  Earlier this year, we had decided we no longer needed the old hymnals we had been storing.  They weren’t in good shape, so there wasn’t really much we could do with them. After giving a number to congregates who wanted one, we still had about 80 left.  What to do with tattered left over hymnals in a power point world?

I’ll tell you what we did: We made flags.

A number of the crafty (and not-so-crafty, but graciously-spirited) took the Easter songs from the hymnals and turned them into flags with which to decorate the church.  And, to me, the church looked glorious.  Turning something seemingly worthless into something of beauty?  That’s redemption. I am so all about that.

So we walked into flags.  And then we started the service and tore down the black cloths from the windows. We sang Happy Day.  Puppets came and gave us all chocolate bars. And then we made some more flags.

We had stashed the hymnals (minus their Easter songs of course) back in the seats.  In the sermon I talked about how Easter changes everything, how we could not even have the rest of the songs we sing without the Easter ones. Then we gave everyone BBQ skewers and tape and invited them to have at the hymnals.  We asked people to pick a favourite song – the song that was theirs because of Easter – and make their own flag.

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(Here we are making flags.  My church is so used to me asking them to do things like this that they don’t even seem to blink any more when I suggest these things.  “A little craft time on Easter Sunday? Pass me the tape!” They are awesome). 

Now, I had planned this out, of course. And I had planned that we would close with the song “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” during which we would invite people to wave their flags. Now, our church is not the flag waving type, so this was a calculated risk on my part.  I hoped the Easter joy would bring out the flag waving side of at least a few of us.   But as the activity was finishing up, the worship team started to sing “Christ is Risen From the Dead.”  And you know what everyone started to do?

Yeah, they waved those flags.

I know, I know…I should’ve known they would do that.  You give people a flag – what else is there to do?  But still.  When I turned around (I sit at the front) and saw what was happening I was overwhelmed with emotion.  We didn’t need to ask people to stand – everyone was already standing.  We didn’t need to invite them to wave the flags.  The flags were already high in the air, and you know that people were waving those things with all their might.  

 

So then I ugly cried.  (You know ugly crying? When it crosses over from delicately wiping a few tears in an appropriate lady-like manner to wiping your nose with your sleeve and hacky noises?  Yeah, that). And I didn’t even care.  All I felt was joy.

I felt joy that the useless, the ugly, the discarded can become something beautiful.  I felt joy because God doesn’t let anything in our lives be wasted. I felt joy because I looked around and I saw story after story and song after song of God doing His thing and I knew that so many of those flags represented stories full of hurt and full of pain and full of loss – and that the flags they were waving didn’t say that.  They said “Amazing Grace.” “Jesus Loves Me.”  “My Jesus I Love Thee.”

I felt joy because of what God can do with a story, no matter how beaten up or broken that story may be. Because of Easter, a story can become a song.  It can become a flag.

And I had a very happy Easter.

 

 

 

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d get here. 

I’m not just saying that.  For months, I have thought of Easter Sunday with a heavy heart.  Thoughts of Easter would be laced with memories, and uncertainty, and the fear that I just wouldn’t feel up to it.  I wondered if my favourite holiday would be forever changed from something I loved to something I tolerated, something I waited out instead of something I entered in. 

Earlier this week I decided to blog my way through Holy Week, and a lot of you joined me.  Thank-you.  This week has forever changed me.  Even though I’m a verbal person, I often struggle to share the deepest things I am feeling.  It’s easier for me to write them. Or preach them.  Not always so easy just to say them – but I am learning.  And I am learning that sharing it helps.

Here is what I also learned this week:  there is no way around Holy Week.  The only way around it is through it.  It was absolutely an option for me to avoid it, but that just means that Holy Week would have lingered.  And there is no way around grief. Grief doesn’t go away by trying to forget about it, as any of you who have been on the journey surely know.  You have to jump in and wade your way through – backwards and sideways and in circles sometimes – but through it.  Such as it is with the journey to the joy of Easter – it only comes through the cross.    

And now here I am on Easter Sunday morning and I am surprised and happy to say that I feel… ready.  I am ready to celebrate today.  I am ready to wave flags and sing and talk about resurrection.  I know there will still be moments when I will have tears.  I know that I will sing about Christ conquering death and I will feel like it is Roxanne’s story that I am singing – and it will tug at my heart. I know that my grief is not finished.

And I know that there is joy.  He is risen! 

It really does change everything.

I remember last Easter Sunday. Thanks to the children, I was up early. I decided to try Skyping the family at Roxanne’s house.  Roxanne was lying in bed. My sister Deanne was there with her. And her daughter Sam was in the middle of the Easter egg hunt Roxanne had still been sure to make happen (did I mention she was amazing?).  We talked for a few minutes, and it was good. Then something messed up with our connection – but only on their end.  They thought I was gone, but their computer was still on and I could see and hear everything they were saying.  For close to an hour I sat and watched, and listened. I listened to my sister’s voice. I watched her smile.  I watched her celebrate Easter – and it brought me so much joy.

 From different sides of the screen, we celebrated Easter 2013.

And, from different sides of a screen, we celebrate Easter today.   

It is true because He is risen.

Oh, Roxanne…I can hardly wait until we celebrate together again, when all the screens are gone.

Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away.  He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.  At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.  Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there. (John 19:38-42)

I don’t think most people know what to do the day after a funeral.

What, after all, are we supposed to do?  We have shaken hands at the funeral home.  We have closed the casket.  We have stood at the cemetery.   We have eaten the sandwiches and drunk the coffee. We have done what it is that we do. And then there we are – with the rest of our lives stretching before us, and it is the first real day of a new everything.

There are, of course, things to keep us busy.  We can return the casserole dishes to the people who made us meals.  We can drive the family to the airport.  We can do paperwork.  We can try not to think about what we did the day before.   Not to think of bodies and caskets and cemeteries.  Of burials and tombs and stones between us and our loved ones.  We can try not to focus too much on the long road ahead – a road without the one we love beside us – and what that road will look like for every day to come.

I remember the day after my sister’s funeral.  I remember crying every time I saw her picture.  I remember not wanting to get out of bed.  I remember how badly I wanted to talk to her about her funeral, and debrief all the details she had planned so thoughtfully. I remember the overwhelming heaviness of realizing I would never be able to talk to her again.

I wonder sometimes what it was like for Jesus’ disciples that Saturday, the day after Jesus’ was buried.     Did they think about him hanging on the cross, and resting in the tomb?  Did they lament the mistakes they made? Did they worry what they were going to do next? Did they feel frightened? Lonely?  Scared?  Lost?

Saturday is a hard place to be, after Good Friday.

Of course, we know something that the disciples didn’t, us people of Saturday.  We already know what happened the Sunday after Good Friday.   We know there is more to the story.

On this Easter Saturday, I wait for tomorrow.  It is no longer Good Friday, and it is not yet Easter Sunday.  The sermon is written.  The chocolates are purchased.  The church is ready – and I’m waiting.  Because it is Saturday.

In many ways we all live in Saturday.  We are waiting.  We are people of the in between.  We have been through the Good Fridays, and we look forward to Easter.  But we still have to wait.  We have to wait because it is still Saturday.

I recently read something a person wrote some years after the death of a loved one:  “The terrible thing was not that [she] died – but that [she] stayed dead.”

To that I said: “Amen.”

That’s a Saturday truth. Saturday is hard.  Saturday is exhausting.  But, more than anything, Saturday can be long.  For some of us, Saturday can last years and years.  One of the things that overwhelms me most is to think of the rest of my life without my sister.  I know that I will miss her when I wake up tomorrow and I will miss her 30 years from now when I am filing for my old age pension.  There may be a long Saturday ahead of me.

But I also think of another favourite quote of mine, by Fredrich Buechner:  “The resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.”

And I say “Amen” even louder.

I’d love to go back and whisper to the disciples on that Easter Saturday “Remember what He said! Remember what He promised!  Wait until you see what happens tomorrow!”

Maybe, instead, I’ll just keep whispering to myself.

 

When I was in high school my best friend’s parents were the pastors of our church.  I spent a lot of time at their house, and they never turned me away (bless ‘em!).  There was, however, one day that we avoided: Good Friday.  “Good Friday is a hard day for my mom,” Pam would say.  And it was true.  Mrs. Cole, with the gentle heart of a true saint, found Good Friday hard.  She would grieve on Good Friday.  We didn’t hang out at her house on Good Friday for the same reason we didn’t hang out at the house of anyone who had just lost a loved one.  The heart-broken sometimes need a little space.  On Good Friday she embraced her broken heart.

I remember Good Friday 2013.  We woke and prepared ourselves for our annual Good Friday service.  I donned, as I always do, black clothing.  I went to the service a little early.  I was actually not leading the service that day, but I was going to be singing a duet and I had to practice.  During communion, my friend Kathleen and I were slated to sing “Abide With Me.” 

I had chosen the song a few weeks before, and, although I don’t sing often in church, I knew I wanted to sing it.  I didn’t know that it would mean so much by that Good Friday service.  We practiced before the service and I did feel ready to sing.  I wanted to sing it.  As the service neared its end and people came forward to receive and to remember, we sang each of the verses, and I meant them. 

We got to the last verse:

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

I was fine until the very last line.  Then my voice caught.  “In life, in death” hit pretty close to home on that Good Friday.  I have a very distinct memory of that moment. I looked out and saw a man from our congregation, who I much admire, with tears in his eyes.  As the song ended, he nodded.  “In life, in death -”and he nodded.  I can still see that tearful, knowing, nod..

Just a few weeks later I sat at my sister’s deathbed.  The nurses had called us in and told us it wouldn’t be long.  The night was dark and quiet.  We turned the lights down.  We smoothed her quilt.  We sat and waited. 

The hockey game was on the TV.  My sister’s breath grew more laboured.  My brother turned off the hockey game.  We held her hands.  “We love you.”  “We’re here.”  “It’s okay.”  And a final breath.  We waited a few moments and called for a nurse.  She came in.

And she nodded.

In life, in death.

That was it.  Sometimes we just have to sit with the story, the story of death.  That is Good Friday.  “In life, in death, abide with me. “

We just sit with the story.  20 year later, I get it Mrs. Cole. 

Will you sit with me?

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.  Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).  There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”

 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

 “Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.”

This happened that the Scripture might be fulfilled that said,

“They divided my clothes among them

and cast lots for my garment.”

So this is what the soldiers did.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”  A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.  When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

 

This week we dyed eggs with our children.   As we prepare for Easter, there is joy in creating something beautiful out of simple white eggs.

A few years ago we added a fun twist to the tradition. We were celebrating Easter with our friends, the Simpsons.  Diane served us devilled eggs, which she explained she made every Easter out of the eggs their family had dyed earlier in the season.  I thought it was an awesome idea!  As we dove into her delicious devilled eggs, though, we decided that, for Easter, “devilled” just didn’t seem like the right word. (Yes, we knew that it just referred to a style of preparing the eggs, but still…).  We decided that, for us, devilled eggs would henceforth be called “Resurrection Eggs.”  A new name and a new meaning.  They became even more delightful!!

As we live in Holy Week, there is something powerful about the imagery of taking a plain white egg and making it art, of then making that art into delicious food, and of then giving that food a new name, so that everything becomes part of a story of redemption.  This is task of the Easter story – to see redemption in all things.

Sometimes, however, it can be hard. It can be a challenge to see the beauty in what is otherwise ugly.  As I continue to look back at the last days of my sister’s life, one of the most difficult things for me to remember is what happened to her body.  Having battled skin cancer for eight years, Roxanne’s body had been through a lot.  She had had many surgeries and many different growths removed.  She had many scars, some of them very deep.  Roxanne often tried to cover up her scars, which I understand, but I never saw those scars as something to hide.  To me, they were beautiful, and I would tell her so.  I didn’t see ugly.  I saw survival.  I saw strength.  They were the symbols of my sister who was even more beautiful because of what she had been through – not in spite of it.

Nearer the end, it got harder to see beauty.

Friends, melanoma is ugly.  It is cancer that is visible.  It takes over the outside along with the inside. It is with a heavy heart that I remember the growths that kept growing all over her body, even as her body was shrinking.  On her leg, there was a growth bigger than a tennis ball. It’s hard for me to think of those growths as beautiful.  I don’t know what new name to give them to see them as something else.  I want to call them ugly and leave it there.

Good Friday is tomorrow. It too is an ugly day and I must name it so.  Today I read from John 19:

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.

Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.” When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”

As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!…”

 “…Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.

 But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

 “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.

 “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.

Only a few days ago many of these same people had shouted “Hosanna!  Here is our King!”  And now they yelled “Crucify!”  He is criminal!

What a difference it makes how we name things.

Jesus had not changed. He was the same man who had entered their city to praises earlier that week.  How they saw him had changed – they no longer saw him for what he truly was.  They couldn’t – or wouldn’t – see His beauty.

There is a time to name things for what they are.  Cancer is ugly. Crucifixion is ugly.  Death is ugly.

And there is a time to name things for what they really are – Roxanne was not cancer.  She was beautiful, inside and out, cancer and all.

Jesus was not a criminal. He was – and is – King of all things. And because that is true, I look forward to the day when I will see Roxanne in her new body, even more beautiful than the one I remember on this earth.  A body that will be so because of the scars of Jesus.

This week, I will look at my soon-to-be “Resurrection Eggs” and remember:  Because of Christ, there can always be beauty.  Even in tumors.  Even in cancer.  Even in scars.

So much depends on how we name things.

Today is a quiet day in my office as I prepare for this weekend. It is Dallas’ day off so I’m in the office on my own, writing a puppet play, preparing a sermon, resisting the urge to eat all the chocolate bars on the table – waiting for Sunday, when it is time.

It is nap time at the day care that shares our building, and my soul, too, is quiet.  I feel peaceful.  It is good to prepare for Easter with a sense of peace.  Last year I did not feel feel peace as I  waited for Easter. Holy Week 2013 was a week of great fear and anxiety for me.  I write in the peace, even as I remember the chaos.

It all connected to the struggle of living far from Roxanne, while also having two small children at home.  I wanted to be able to be with her as much as I could; I also wanted to be intentional about making wise decisions about when I would go to visit so that my absences weren’t too hard on my children.  It was infuriating because when someone is in the final phases of cancer, no one can give you all the definite answers that you want:  How much longer?  When should I come home?  Will she live for days, or weeks, or months?  Will I fly home now, only to come back and wish I’d waited a little longer so I could be there when she needs me most?  Should I fly home now so that I can still see her when there are glimpses of her left?  For about the millionth time in my life I would have liked to have a nice memo from God with a detailed calendar of what was to come, but, of course, it doesn’t work that way.

Roxanne had been feeling poorly for a while, but we thought it was the treatment.  I truly believed that after she was done the treatment that we would have a few more “good weeks” (even months?) for me to visit and spend time with her again before the cancer took over.  In fact, during a visit I had with her in February, she took me for lunch on our last day and said “You know this could be our last lunch out together.”  “Of course it won’t be,” I said, “I’m going to come back again when your treatments are done and we’ll go out for lunch every day if you want!”  I really really believed in February that there would be more “good” time left when her treatments were done.  Holy Week was when I realized that there wouldn’t be, that that lunch had indeed been our own “last supper.”  Roxanne stopped her treatment after her doctor’s appointment and was even sicker than before, so we had to admit:  the treatment was not the only thing making her sick all that time.  The cancer had been raging all along. Stupid cancer.

I was anxious all the time, that most impertinent of Holy Weeks.  I had a flight already booked for the middle of April, and quickly moved it back to the Tuesday after Easter, April 2.  I called family at home constantly.  “How is she today?”  “Should I come home sooner?”  “What should I do?”

I lived with two great fears:

1. Roxanne would grow sick past the point that I could talk to her before I got home.
2. Her daughter, Laura, who had gone on a school trip to Europe for Easter break and was not due back until the end of the week after Easter, would not make it home in time to see her mother alive again.

Both of these ideas kept me up at night.  Roxanne just seemed so sick.  I couldn’t imagine she had much time left (of course, I did not understand how much worse it would actually get…Stupid cancer).

Everyone assured me it would be fine.  None of her doctors or nurses or caregivers saw any signs her death was imminent.  But she was still dying.  And I was still in Ontario.   “Not imminent” was small comfort.  And I was so unsure and confused and stressed that I didn’t feel like I could make the decision to change the flight and just go earlier and I couldn’t decide not to.  So, I just trusted the prayers for wisdom that had led me to book my flight when I did and I waited.  Still, most days I felt like I was failing as a sister. It was one of the most critical seasons in her life and I wasn’t there. 

Today I read the story of Peter, one who loved Jesus and promised to follow Him to the very end.

In John 13 it reads:

Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?”  Jesus replied, “Where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”

Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now?  I will lay down my life for you.”

Then Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for me? I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!”

Peter’s intentions were good. His love for Jesus was not made up. It was real.  He really believed that he would be with Jesus wherever He went, that there would be more time, that it wasn’t their last supper. When Jesus was arrested he even took out a sword and attacked one of the accusers, cutting off one of his ears!  “Take that!,” he seemed to say, “I will protect this one I love!”

And if I had a sword to hack away cancer I would have attacked it, too – time and time again.

But then it got scary for Peter.  His association with Jesus left him in a precarious position.  He followed Jesus as he was led to the High Priest for questioning, but he stayed in the courtyard, at a distance.  Already failing at his promise.

Jesus was in trouble and he was in the courtyard.

My sister was dying and I was half a country away.

Many of us know what happened next for Peter.  Asked three different times if he knew Jesus by those within and around the courtyard,  Peter said he did not.  After the third denial, he heard the rooster crow.  Jesus had been right: Peter wouldn’t stay with him, despite his best intentions.

My sister had been right – there was not another lunch out, despite my best intentions.

As we grow closer to Good Friday, I join with Peter in his story – not just as someone who journeyed with the loss of a loved one, and who has all the normal guilt and questions that surround that, but as someone who also knows that on my journey to Christ I often come up wanting.  I want to do more.  I want to be true to my faith in all things.  I want to stay strong when the hardest challenges face me.  I tell Jesus over and over all about how I want to be.  Holy Week is when we lament that, like Peter, our good intentions will never be enough.

My good intentions aren’t enough to make me the follower of Christ I want to be.

My good intentions weren’t enough to make me the perfect sister that I wanted to be.

The joy is that Jesus didn’t ask for good intentions.  He didn’t ask for good at all.  He came to invite us into a story because of His good, not our own.  And in that story, the one we have entered this week, it is just a few days until Peter will run to the tomb and realize  what he didn’t understand before:  that Jesus’ story was bigger than Peter’s own part in it.  Peter’s job wasn’t to shape Jesus’ story – it was to let Jesus shape his.

Two days after Easter, I arrived back in Newfoundland to “the best day” Roxanne had had since her health had turned. She came to the living room and sat with us for a while. She played a little bit on the piano.  We were thankful that they found a new combination of medications that helped provide better pain management.  I like to think that the improvement had a teensy weensy bit to do with me showing up – but the truth is it was my story that changed when I got there, not Roxanne’s.  She didn’t need me nearly as much as I needed her.

I stayed for ten days.  I helped her pick out pictures for her funeral slide show, I watched TV with her when she was up for it, I moved her favourite flowers close to her so she could see them best.

I was there when Laura got home from Europe full of stories and the special joy she always brings and heaped love and presents on everybody.  I was there when she gave her mom a flowing pink scarf from Italy that Roxanne immediately put on her head with a smile.   And she looked beautiful.

I was there to see my sister, though suffering, at peace.  There to hear her say “I know the girls are going to be okay.”

I was there to learn about peace.  And this Holy Week, though I am sometimes sad, I am not anxious.

Sunday’s coming.

 

I’ve been really encouraged and blessed by the kind words people have shared about yesterday’s blog post.  I’m glad we’re in this journey together, friends.  Let’s keep going.

Today I am remembering a conversation with Roxanne during Holy Week last year, shortly after the Doctor’s appointment that told her to “get her affairs in order.”  She called me at work to talk. Now it should be said here that Roxanne and I talked on the phone a LOT.  There were times I got off the phone and realized we had talked for two hours, and barely with a pause to breathe the whole time.  With her living so far away, a lot of our relationship happened over the phone – but every conversation felt like we were sitting and talking over a cup of coffee.

This phone call was different.  First of all, we hadn’t been having very long conversations in the few weeks prior to this because the treatment she had tried was making her feel so miserable.  So it was nice to have a conversation and hear her at a moment when she was actually feeling (in her words) “not too bad.”  We talked about what the doctors had said.  I told her I was sorry.  She said “Well, there it is.”  And then we talked about her funeral.

Funny enough this wasn’t the first conversation we’d had about this. Roxanne had battled cancer for eight years, and through the years when there bad seasons with her health she would often give me little “funeral tidbits,” such as “I would want Barb Pritchett to do my funeral.”  “I’ll remember,” I would tell her. “I would like the song ‘In Christ Alone.’”  “I’ll remember,” I would tell her.  And she had said to me “I’d want you to do my eulogy.”  “I would love to,” I would say.

I had started to write here “I don’t know why she told me these things,” but that’s not true.  She told me because she knew I would remember when the time came.  And I think it also had something to do with the whole minister thing, which meant that I didn’t freak out when she mentioned her funeral.  I’m kind of used to funeral talk.

So in this phone call we had another funeral talk, but it was different this time, because it wasn’t just an idea anymore. This was the real thing.  She told me “I want you to do my eulogy, and I want it to be fun.”  I laughed and agreed.

“Roxanne,” I said jokingly, “I promise I will show right off.”  (This is an old joke in our family, a joke we’d make when we wanted to tell someone to do well – “Go show right off!” we would say. I’m pretty sure this originated with my mother).

Roxanne laughed.  “That’s great,” she said.  “Make sure you show right off.”  And we laughed some more. It was actually a pretty light-hearted conversation.”  I told her the songs that I knew she wanted.  “You remembered,” she said. “Of course,” I told her.

Then I got off the phone and thought “I am going to do my sister’s eulogy soon.”  It was a lot to take in.

This week I realized something interesting – that was the last phone conversation I ever had with Roxanne.  The last one.  Yes, once or twice in the weeks to come she would get on the phone and say hello for a second or two, but she was never well enough again for one of our marathon phone calls.  The last time we talked on the phone we talked about her eulogy.  We talked about preparing to die.  And we laughed and laughed.

It’s kind of perfect.

Today I read this passage from the Holy Week narrative (John 18: 1-11):

When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was a garden, and he and his disciples went into it.

Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.  So Judas came to the garden, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees. They were carrying torches, lanterns and weapons.

Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, “Who is it you want?”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied.

“I am he,” Jesus said. (And Judas the traitor was standing there with them.)  When Jesus said, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground.

Again he asked them, “Who is it you want?”

“Jesus of Nazareth,” they said.

Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go.”  This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled: “I have not lost one of those you gave me.”

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.)

Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”

 

I read this, and I think about Jesus accepting – walking towards –  the story that was to come.

 

“Knowing all that was going to happen to him.”

 

“I am he.”

 

“Put away your sword.”

 

And I think about that conversation:

 

“Would you do my eulogy?”

 

I don’t know what it must be like to face one’s death and come to acceptance of that.  To say “This is where I am walking.  This is my story.”  That was last year’s Holy Week story for Roxanne. “I am she who is starting the final part of the journey.”  I am not trying to trivialize the profundity of what Jesus’ did here.  I am not trying to say that what she did was the same as what Christ did.  But I’m saying I see Holy Week in it.  I see Holy Week in getting prepared for what it is to come, even when – especially when – it’s hard.   And of course Roxanne was not just getting prepared for the funeral…she was preparing for eternity.  She herself chose the words that we would sing when her life on this earth ended:

No guilt in life, no fear in death,
This is the power of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath.
Jesus commands my destiny.
No power of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home,
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand.

I’ll remember, Roxanne.

 

And so, in the midst of grief I will get prepared for joy.  I have begun.  This is what I bought at the store last night, which we will use in our worship service this Sunday (and for any of you worried about our allergy policy, no, we will not open the Peanut Butter Cups!).

 

Now, when I find myself counting chocolate bars by the fifties, how can I not start to get excited? Sunday’s coming!  And there is chocolate.

Then I came from the store to our Board meeting at our house, and Phyllis Kokoski brought Easter eggs.  I LOVE HER.  Then she said “I read your blog today” – and handed me a flower.

 

 

Oh, the joy is coming, too.

This week is the week that the Church has traditionally called “Holy Week.” It is the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday, when we enter into the journey that Jesus took to the cross – through his anger at the Temple, to the last supper with his friends, to his arrest, trial, crucifixion and burial. We enter into the grief and pain of Jesus’ journey through this Holy Week. It is a week of lament and heavy hearts, remembering the depth of the story and what it means for us. The grief of Holy Week is turned to joy on Easter Sunday, when we remember how the story ends – resurrection, hope, new beginnings.

I have long loved Easter. I usually say that it is my favourite holiday. What is NOT to love about the day that shapes my entire life story? Why wouldn’t I love celebrating that death didn’t win, that it won’t win, that there is hope? I have been known to be a little giddy on Easter Sunday. I like to laugh and cheer and lead worship services full of both of those things, too. It makes Holy Week worth it, getting to Easter. The heavy heart is a little lighter knowing it will soon be lifted.

Easter feels different to me this year, almost one year since my sister died. I know the right thing to say is that it feels different because now I really get the importance of Easter even more. That it should feel different because now I appreciate the gift of eternal life in an even deeper way. I think I am supposed to say that Easter fills me with hope for my sister and gives me comfort that she is in a better place. But that is not how Easter feels to me right now. This year I feel a whole lot more Holy Week than Easter.

I realized a few days ago that this week is a “grief trigger” for me. Holy Week (though it fell at a different time last year) is full of sad memories. Today is one of those days. It was the Monday of Holy Week that my sister went to the doctor and he told her to go home and prepare to die. She went to a night class that night, did a final presentation (she was a trooper like that) and then she got in bed and it seemed like everything had changed. She became a person dying of a cancer to me at the start of Holy Week last year. Holy Week 2013 was hard and scary and filled with sadness. It was awful The truth is that all that got me through last Holy Week was Easter. I played “Christ is Risen” on repeat.

Christ is risen from the dead,

Trampling over death by death.

Come awake, come awake.

Come and rise up from the grave.

On Easter Sunday I pushed through a sermon. I talked about Christ defeating death. I held it together. Until after the sermon. I had laid flowers at the front of the church and talked about how we lay flowers on graves. As a reminder to us that Christ had changed the story I invited people to come and TAKE BACK a flower. “Today, we are not going to lay flowers down,” I said. “As people of hope, we are going to pick them up.” I invited people to either keep the flower or pass it on to someone who needed resurrection hope. And then person after person walked onto our platform and handed a flower to me. I can honestly say I didn’t see that coming and I was totally overwhelmed. I stood there and received flower after flower. Hope after hope. It is one of the most powerful memories of my life.

(Easter flowers, 2013)

Now here I am in another Holy Week. And the truth is, it is comfortable here. I am all over Holy Week. I get grief. I embrace the heavy heart. It’s kind of a relief for the world to join with me and for all of us to lament together. Holy Week is a gift of grace for the grieving. But I am a little fearful – because the week has to end in Easter. That is how the story goes. And while I don’t like living in the season of the heavy heart, I’m not sure I’ll be ready to celebrate come Easter Sunday. I will definitely need a week to get ready. I hope a week will be enough.

So this is my vulnerable invitation to you this week – would you join me on my Holy Week journey? I will post some thoughts each day on my Holy Week story, of my journey to (hopefully) Easter joy. I would like us to journey together.  Share your stories and your questions and your thoughts, too.

Today I think of the prayer of Jesus, as he wrestled with what was to come in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father if it is possible, may this cup by taken from me. Yet, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26: 39)

That is a prayer I am tempted to pray. “Father, maybe for this year you could take this happy Easter expectation from me. Take the service. And the sermon. And for this year I’ll stay in Holy Week with my memories a little bit longer.”

I was tempted to hand it all off. There is a wonderful second pastor right here that could do all those things in a heartbeat. But I sensed God’s heart for me in this one: “Do it anyway.”

Preach hope anyway.

Because when you do, hope comes anyway. Flower after flower.

And I’ve got a week to get ready.