The "and" of Holy Week
hot dog buns and little griefs that last... or don't
I feel bad for the guy who tapped on my window to see if I was going to back out of my parking spot.
I hate those people, the car sitters. Taunting all the hopeful parkers with the brake lights… but today I’m those people.
I feel worse when I look up from my lap at him, watching his posture sink like he’d just come upon the most pitiful roadkill, roadkill that just happened to be my face. My red, swollen, tear-streamed face, buried in my hands.
The grocery store is hard for me since my Maven girl was diagnosed with food allergies. It’s gotten so much better with time, but even now, my time meal planning and shopping is a litmus test for my mental health.
This time last year, I was having panic attacks every time I walked into Whole Foods. I would have flashbacks to “before” I knew about the allergies that would send me into a longing nostalgia in the pit of my stomach. How gracefully I used to place eggs and cheese into my cart without even knowing I was taking it for granted.
Turning the corner to the dairy section, I’d have flash forwards to her future. I would fantasize about what she would be able to put in the cart as a college student, giggling through the store with her roommates: fruit, veggies, chicken made on a safe pan.
*I start spinning* …
Ok, she’ll have to avoid aisles 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9…
*Spinning, short of breath*...
By the time I got to the baked goods, I’d be gone. Tears streaming down my face, eyes crossing in disorientation. “Do. Not. Look. at the birthday cakes, Iesha”. The woman at the deli counter only knew my face with tears coming down for a solid six months. Bless her.
Over time, the grocery store has been proof of triumph. We’ve overcome so many meals together as a family, learning as we go, and gaining confidence. Maven and I have begun going to the store together. Wiping the cart down obsessively and then singing our way down every aisle. My heart still longing, still beating through my chest, but her face… it reminds me why I keep going.
Tonight, though, she wasn’t with me.
I was doing a fast grab between dinner and bedtime, happily running through the store with my headphones in, grabbing all of our “safe foods”. We’ve been building memories around certain foods we know we will be able to have all together one day- burgers, hot dogs, spaghetti. I grabbed some hot dogs and went for the buns- double checked the label because YOU ALWAYS DOUBLE AND TRIPLE CHECK. (Ask any food allergy parent, constantly scanning the label-again, again.) And there it was, sesame flour. So I checked all the normally safe breads- sesame flour burger buns, sesame flour bagels, sesame flour everywhere. Not one safe bread.
I had heard about this happening lately, food companies intentionally putting sesame flour into their products, but I hadn’t seen it yet. When I did, the old familiar feeling hit me.
It didn’t drag me slowly through the store like usual. It hit me with no warning like a freight train. I kept my face as normal as possible, grabbing a few more things and running to the register, chatting and bagging my food with tears streaming down. By the time I got in the car, I closed my door and wailed. And wailed.
Until my boy tapped the window and ruined his own day.
These moments, they’re not the most notable moments of the day anymore. They happen all the time, don’t get me wrong. But they pass. They pass so frequently, and so quickly, I rarely even share them. I feel, I cry, I get my family's groceries, I cook the food every meal. Every day. All day.
I have to keep going.
I have accepted these feelings as grief. But the “I see it coming” grief hurts so differently than the little surprise griefs.
The surprise griefs are the ones that scream at you that you’re just pretending to be normal. Because there’s this part of you in the back of your head that can’t breathe, can’t let her guard down. She knows- she will learn to live without ease.
I hesitate to write the “and” part of this that’s coming, even now. So let me say this first: Sometimes it feels impossible. Sometimes I feel silly for being so scared. Most of the time, I just feel alone. I don’t want any of the hard parts to be true, but they are. Keeping my kid safe from things that should not hurt her, from things that don’t hurt others, from things that are essential to life, but could take her life… it’s not fair. Not one bit of it is good.
and… (ugh)
Nothing in my entire life has brought me to my face in prayer more than this. Every single morning, I beg for enough to get through just today. I pray for full healing, and the strength to hold both the possibility of answered prayers, and the reality of life right now. There is a complexity to life that I don’t want to have to learn, and an intimacy that I don’t want to give up. I never knew it was possible to truly feel the miracle of making it to the end of the day, but right now in this season, I FEEL IT. At bedtime, when I rock Maven to sleep, I am drenched- DRENCHED- in gratitude that we made it another day. Three meals, and two snacks. I’m getting to feel the intense awareness of daily miracle.
I hate this, and I fully believe healing is possible. I want out of this hyper-vigilance, and I’m so grateful for so many things I didn’t even notice before. I don’t want to do this every day, and this is what I am doing.
As I listened to the sermon on Palm Sunday, I felt empathized with.
I’m thinking about Jesus approaching this awful event. I’m reading Him pray to not have to do it. How he felt troubled, his body anticipating the pain that was coming. And just like some movie montage in my head, I see every face I know that suffers. The grieving, heartbroken, depressed, scared, sad, longing, stuck, desperate. The friend in agony. The me that wails in her car. The gnawing pain of loss and the feelings that make you want to go back and cherish the “before”.
None of that is good. None of it feels good. None of it is supposed to be good.
And.
It’s not the end of the story.
Knowledge of the coming resurrection is not a scapegoat to pass the hard stuff, it’s exactly the reason you are safe to feel the hard feelings. This week, of all weeks, is your invitation to sit in grief. It’s not the end, and it’s not forever.
Thank you for the things I don’t want to thank you for. For the ways your presence is undeniable when life gets dark. You model permission to be true. You sit with me in my grief, weeping alongside me. Help me to embrace the ‘and’ of this Holy Week, of today. Help me to open myself to what’s coming tomorrow.
Amen.