NOT FIXED. RISEN

 

What do you do when your soul is crushed?

You move through the day with careful grace.

Answer what needs answering.

Say what needs saying.

You become fluent in “I’m fine”—a language that asks nothing and reveals less.

And somehow, life remains aggressively unimpressed by your devastation.

The dog still needs to go out.

The dishwasher still needs emptying.

Someone wants to know what’s for dinner.

Apparently your complete emotional collapse does not qualify you for an extension on the electric bill.

So you keep moving.

What do you do when your soul is crushed?

You pause in ordinary places.

The kitchen.

The driveway.

The middle of a sentence.

You walk into a room and forget why you're there, although lately that could be grief or simply being over fifty.

Hard to know.

You return.

You always return.

But not all of you comes back at once.

So you reach for what is steady.

Coffee.

A familiar voice.

A dog beside you.

A small task that begins and ends the way it should.

A prayer you aren't entirely sure you believe while you're saying it.

You show up even if only a fraction of you makes it through the door.

Because sometimes faith isn't believing everything will be okay.

Sometimes faith is simply staying.

There was a garden once.

A man overwhelmed by sorrow.

A plea for another way.

And still…

a staying.

There was a cross that looked like the end.

Then a tomb.

Then silence.

A whole day when the people who loved Jesus had absolutely no idea that Sunday was coming.

We call it Holy Saturday.

I've been thinking about that.

Because maybe some seasons of life aren't meant to be solved.

Maybe they're Holy Saturday.

The sacred, terrible space between what has been lost and what has not yet risen.

You don't know what's coming.

You can't feel God.

You don't have a five-step plan.

You just stay.

You breathe.

You borrow belief when your own runs out.

And eventually, almost without announcement, something returns.

You laugh and realize you meant it.

You notice the sky.

You make plans farther than tomorrow.

You hear yourself say, “I'm okay,” and for once it isn't a performance.

Maybe resurrection doesn't mean nothing died.

Something did.

Maybe it doesn't mean everything goes back to normal.

It won't.

Maybe resurrection is discovering that God can still make life from something you were certain was over.

Slowly.

Quietly.

Not the same.

Not fixed.

Risen.