Now and the Not Yet by Laura Holmes

You can gauge the state of my stress levels by at least two metrics--the number of sedimentary layers of clothing on the chair in my bedroom and the number of YouTube videos I have watched in a week.

Five layers? It’s been a difficult week. That will probably correlate to a large number of videos. A cursory glance at my viewing history will show a whole host of “transformation” videos--from overgrown yard reclamation, to pressure washing, furniture refinishing, and cleaning services. I gravitate to these videos because I think they’re about hope. A beautiful result. A way to restore what has been lost.

These videos have a clear narrative structure: there’s the before and the after. Before--chaos. After--calm. A charming, kind, non-judgemental soul is doing all the hard work to wrangle the chaos into calm. They’ll run into troubles, but they will prevail. They’ll do it in fast-forward. They’ll regale us with the before and after pictures. They will astonish us! But most especially, these videos are about the hope that it can be done. The promise is that with hard work and the right products (Use my code for a discount!), we can change the ending. Chaos will not win. 

Unfortunately, that’s not always the way life is. Chaos for sure. Calm and order sometimes. But not everything can be transformed from chaos to calm with hard work. Sometimes we’re caught in a strange liminal space of “now and not yet”. There’s nothing we can do to speed things up--to fast forward us to the big glorious reveal of transformation right after this commercial break. We can only stay in that space and wait. And we wait. We may flirt with hope and wrestle with despair, but we wait. And just maybe we distract ourselves with dumb videos.

Oh, waiting is so hard. It’s hard when you’re little and you’re waiting for Christmas morning or your birthday. But at least you know something wonderful will arrive after you put in the time to wait. Waiting is harder still when you are older and you have the wisdom and experience to know that sometimes the outcome isn’t a shiny new bike. Sometimes it’s whatever the crappy opposite grown-up version of that is. Like a tax audit. We’ve learned you can’t always hustle yourself to the outcome you prefer. 

There are times when the outcome is a dark, difficult loss. Sometimes terrible things happen--you lose a job, a partner, a friend, your good health, you name it. Well-intentioned people will say, “Things will get better.” And sure, sometimes they do. But sometimes they don’t. We have seen it first-hand. We don’t love it. We don’t prefer it, but we know this is the way of things. And so we wait. There’s nothing else to do.

Mindful breathing focuses on exhalations and inhalations. I’m not an expert on any of this, but I understand there are two moments of pause. One exists at the end of the exhale, the emptying, and one at the top of the inhale when you cannot add a single molecule of air to your lungs. Both are uncomfortable in their own way, but the pause at the end of the exhale feels the most like death to me. There’s a sort of panic during the pause before the inhale. What if I can’t inhale? What if this is death? 

On the Saturday before Easter Sunday, Jesus’s friends had nothing but that out-of-oxygen fear and grief. They hid. They scattered, and then they gathered together in their not-knowing not-yet-ness. They were caught between the emptying exhale and the start of the life-reviving inhale. And God was silent. This was a day of all desolation, no consolation. Death and loss reigned. Fear and confusion kept them prisoners, small and afraid.

The Holy Saturday vigil service at St. Paul’s was a reminder of this day when the silence of God sent shockwaves through everyone who loved Jesus. They were waiting and without any certainty. The promise and hope died when Jesus did. They didn’t even have enough strength to formulate a Plan B. What good would it do? Jesus was their leader, and he was dead, buried. 

That grief is palpable to me. I have known that kind of grief and shock. You may have too. As I sat in the darkened sanctuary lit only by candlelight, I was struck by the desolation. How pitiful and sad is this meager light--trying to push back the darkness! But then I was reminded of the other candle-lighting we do on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve candlelight welcomes love, joy, hope, and peace. Silent night. The Lord has come! The consolation. The Holy Saturday candlelight defies hatred, misery, despair, and turmoil. Silent night. The Lord is dead. The desolation.

The exhalation of Good Friday, the painful waiting and pause of Holy Saturday, the inhalation of Easter. The desolation, the consolation. The death, the resurrection. The emptying and the filling. 

Friends, if you find yourself in this pause after the exhalation of desolation, please trust that the cycle remains true. After the exhalation, the painful pause, there is an inhalation, a resurrection of sorts.  The consolation, the comfort is coming. Alleluia!

May I leave you with a blessing? 

Blessed are you, beloved of God who find yourselves in the “not yet” space.

This pause, 

This waiting, 

This not knowing is painful, bewildering.

You may not even know what to hope for.

Light your candle anyway. 

Your stubborn small light matters.

It is enough for now.

Hold your breath.

This pause, this waiting matters.

It is enough for now.

Be present.

You matter.

You are enough for now and the not yet. 

You are not alone. 

Love waits with you in the pause.

Love was there with you in the exhalation.

Love will be there with you in the glorious inhalation.

Love is here in the now and the not yet.