A Holy Week of Suffering

Holy Week has long been the most precious week of my year. Even in high school, this was the week that brought my focus fully onto Christ in a way nothing else ever can. This is the week that inspired my first novel, A Stray Drop of Blood. This is the week when my hubby and I started dating. This is the week, especially the end of it, when we enter into Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, when I pause normal life to focus on the enormity of what my Savior did for me.

The fact that the Triduum (Holy Thursday through Easter) is also the biggest celebration in the liturgical year is one of the things I immediately loved about the Catholic tradition. In the Baptist church we spent fifteen years in, David and I were often left feeling let down by the disinterest in this holy time, when we wanted to do something each day and…no one else did. So we created our own traditions, but they never felt quite enough. Well, I can say in all honesty that the daily services and masses definitely feel enough. They are enough. They are, in my humblest of opinions, the most beautiful services to be found. The washing of the feet on the Thursday…the focus on the cross and fasting on Friday…and the candlelit vigil on Saturday…gah! I LOVE THEM.

This year, though, will be different for me.

This year, my Holy Thursday starts in an infusion chair in the cancer center.

Tears fill my eyes as I type this. Because, friends, this is not how I want to be spending my Holy Week. I want to be focusing on Him, not the churning of my stomach. I want to be thinking about the cross, not my exhaustion. I want to be celebrating His miraculous resurrection, not trying to drag myself out of bed.

As I realized that this, my fifth infusion of Enhurtu, would be on Holy Thursday, I very nearly reached out to my oncology team to say, “Could we postpone this a week, so that I don’t have to be sick over Easter?” Because the last four…they hit me hard. Even after my clear scans (praise God!) meant dialing back the nastiest part of the drug cocktail, I was still fighting exhaustion for five days and nausea for ten. Last cycle, the week following infusion, I didn’t feel much like me. My brain was a bit foggy. I felt subdued. It was hard to joke (my standard response to pretty much anything), hard to be creative. “You feel so far away after an infusion,” my husband said. And I knew what he meant, because I feel it too. Me, my personality, my spark, is so subdued in those days. I hate it–but it’s the reality.

I didn’t make the request, for a variety of reasons. But as I settled that in my mind, it made room for more thoughts. And they are this:

Maybe this is the perfect time to not feel like me–because maybe then I can focus more on HIM. Maybe this is the perfect time to be raw, emotional, and weak–because maybe then I’ll understand a bit better how HE felt. Maybe this is the perfect time to be suffering–because oh, how HE suffered.

Maybe I need to pause and realize that these holy days are not about me making them enough. They’re about HIM making them enough. Enough to fill me. Enough to sustain me.

Enough to save me.

This isn’t the Holy Week I wanted. But I pray it’s the Holy Week I need. I pray that as I sit in that infusion chair, I can reflect His light. I pray that as we experiment with a new med regimen to try to get the nausea under control, just enough me is there to cling to Him. I pray that as I’m no doubt fighting exhaustion, I can put myself in the garden with the disciples who succumbed to it too, and I can hear my Savior’s bid to pray with Him. To be there with Him. To watch with Him, because His time had come. The hour was nigh.

And all creation held its breath.

Whether we feel it or not, these days are so precious. Because we are pausing to remember the most amazing miracle. The Word who spoke the world into being, the Word that came among us, the Word that was silenced will ring out again in victory in a few short days. And all creation will shout with Him.

I pray that, whatever your traditions, our Lord meets you in a special way this coming weekend too. I pray that we, who are always held so tenderly in our Father’s hand, will be moved in new ways as we contemplate the suffering of our Brother, the sorrow of His death, and the joy of His resurrection. I pray we, too, rise anew with Him. On Sunday and every day.

This weekend, I will likely suffer–just a bit. I’ll probably be tired. I’ll probably feel sick. And I’ll give it to Him, who suffered unto death. Who sweated blood. Who was beaten, lashed, had a crown of thorns pressed cruelly to His brow. Who suffered the most agonizing death ever devised by man, and who did it willingly.

For you. For me.

He stretched His arms wide to the world, by His own choice.

And He defeated that suffering. Won the victory over death. And promises us all that even though we’ll encounter suffering of our own, there is a purpose. And it is Him.