A Mary After My Own Heart

I have always liked Mary Magdalene. 

She’s like the big sister we all needed in a male dominated text.

She’s on the fringe, never perfect, filled with demons and questions, yet fully willing to learn from her Teacher. Her actions often strike me as very bullheaded. Maybe she was a Taurus like me. Ultimately, she was the first to experience Jesus’ resurrection and the first to ever share the Good News. The first to ever say: “He is risen.”

Here’s what I can’t help but think about Mary Magdalene:

Had she not once been filled with demons, could she have stood there at the tomb?

Could she have stood by Christ’s side when he was brutalized and beaten? 

Could someone without skin as thick as hers stood at the tomb near his body?

Could anyone else have watched the stone roll in place to seal him in?

My personal answer is this: no (f-word redacted) way.

Why did someone like Peter not sit outside of the tomb expectantly? He had every reason to believe Jesus would come find him. He had every reason to believe Jesus would be resurrected. And with Pete’s specific personality, I find it hard to believe he wouldn’t have expected or at least desperately wanted to be Jesus’ first stop.

But to put it bluntly, he wasn’t strong enough to stand in his fear and disappointment. He wasn’t able to show his faith even in the midst of what felt like the end of the ministry he had dedicated his life to.

Mary was.

Mary saw before her the end of an era. She watched the body wheeled in and the tomb closed, and perhaps she wept, but she didn’t turn her face. She didn’t run. She had a staring contest with the death of Jesus, the death of her time with him, the death of the ministry she had poured her heart into and she did not turn away.

Let’s just say it: Mary of Magdala is a badass. Or maybe she’s one of those masochists that has to see it to believe it. Regardless, she is certainly braver than her male counterparts in this story, isn’t she? (Yes, girl power. Girl power is what I’m saying.)

She was always a badass because she always believed in the One who had saved her from the demons that she probably perceived to be herself.

I try to figure a way to explain my resurrection. The things I need to see reversed. 

Obviously, plenty of things are too human to be fully reversed. 

But I know that I did face Friday.

Maybe I’m still stuck in Saturday. 

I don’t know what’s next. I can’t help but feel like parts of my life are irreversibly over. I can’t help but think that the calendar I had written is gone - as many of us do in the midst of this pandemic. I can’t help but fight off feelings of unmet expectations. It is all I can do to keep them from turning into resentments. Maybe I still feel the trauma. Maybe I still see the images sometimes. Maybe I still hear the groans of pain and fail to shake them from my heart. Sometimes, panic and anxiety overcome me - and frankly, that’s not Satan. That’s trauma. That’s hurt. It’s natural. 

I do not expect God to resurrect me away from panic, anxiety, depression or the traumas that I can’t or perhaps don’t want to forget.

Instead, I want to be the woman at the tomb. I want to have the wherewithal to face Friday, and I don’t want to let go of Saturday until I’m ready for the fullness of Sunday.

I know that He still is.

I know that there will always be Saturday Situations. I know there will be broken hearts and that it will be hard to hope.

I know there will be many days where I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I also know that Saturday can be a set-up for healing.

I want to see Sunday because I have seen it before, and I know it is good.

I know that He wins.

I know that resurrection is a reality.

I know that this is a different kind of Easter. It is the confrontation of all of the things that I thought were going to happen. 

I am Mary and Martha. I thought Jesus was coming and that Lazarus would not die. I thought he promised that the sickness would not take him, but he has been in the tomb for three days.

But now I know that Jesus was not late. He was showing us something new about who he was. He was resurrection.

And He still is.

I’m learning that sometimes, you have to stand in your disappointment. You have to accept his death to receive his resurrection because you can’t resurrect what hasn't died.

Peter and the disciples couldn’t look death in the face the same way that Mary Magdalene did. 

And I submit to you that it is perhaps entirely because of the seven demons that Jesus drove out of her that she could face her greatest undoing without fleeing.

It’s really hard not to dwell in what could have been. For me, right now, it is an all-consuming thing to reflect on what should have been.

Today, I sit thinking of all of the firsts without her to come. Today, I think of the coming days all to happen between now and May 18th: my birthday, her death day, Mother’s Day, her birthday. 

So yes, I’m still in the middle of Saturday. 

And maybe I only know that Friday is only Good because I know what comes next.

But Saturday is quiet. Saturday would have been the Sabbath for Mary Magdalene. So she dwelt in the acceptance of death.

But as they say, Sunday is coming.

Resurrection is reversal.

Resurrection doesn’t remove pain, but it does give you new breath. 

Upon diagnosis, I expected Mom to live. I wanted Mom to live.

But here I am, with unmet expectations and lost hopes. 

Still, I am proud. I am proud to read the Resurrection Story and relate most of all to Mary Magdalene. I am proud to have looked death in the eyes. I am proud to have mourned a life, the plans we had and the many things that were supposed to have come. I am proud that I did not run in the midst of my disappointment. 

I do believe what’s not in the text is this:

Those who don’t flee have more to sort through.

And though Mary was the first to accept his death, also making her the first to see him risen. And though we know that this only goes to show that God doesn’t love people less depending on how messy they are. I mean, Mary had SEVEN demons driven out of her. But maybe the demons served an an opportunity for Jesus to anoint her with change.

Though that is beautiful, I know that literal resurrection is not a part of my story.

I know that while death has lost its sting, I will not yet see the life I would have wanted for my mom.

It takes time to process everything it took out of you to accept the tomb. It takes time to sort through the things that hurt so badly, which will in turn lead you to the power that is found in Sunday.

Sunday is coming.

But don’t kid yourself. Don’t hold you to an impossible 36 hour turnaround. It seems to me that only Jesus is capable of a timeline like that.

Today, I decided to recognize that I have accepted death and that I can now begin to expect resurrection. 

Begin.

It doesn’t mean that tomorrow I will wake up healed or that my anxiety will be gone, my depression lifted or that I won’t have that classic Garfield Monday Mood.

But maybe I will wake up renewed - ready to get through this Saturday set-up, leading into Sunday’s healing.

I will wake up knowing that because I stayed, I will see what rises. 

And that’s Easter for you.