When Your Life Feels Stuck in Good Friday

Hello Bravehearted Beauties. There’s so much in my heart I’d love to share, but on this Good Friday, words I wasn’t expecting to write are welling up and looking for a place to land. I think they must be words someone needs today. Someone who feels like their life is stuck in Good Friday. Someone who feels like their Easter Sunday is never coming. This is for you, dear one.

PINIT

“Happy Good Friday” has always felt like a strange thing to say. What’s so happy about a day of death and darkness? A day of violent assault and literal brokenness? A day when the One who came to give abundant life is hanging on a cross submitting Himself to death? Nothing looks good about this day…until you know what happens on Easter Sunday.

PINIT

It’s so much the same in our own lives. When we’re looking at just one day or one season of life up close, it can look a lot like Good Friday. It can look like everything is dark, broken, wasted, hopeless, senseless…the opposite of what we thought life should be. But when we step back and get a glimpse of the larger story, brokenness gives way to beauty. And there’s nothing like Easter Sunday to remind us of that truth!

PINIT

This is the way life works: brokenness gives way to beauty. Barrenness gives way to life. Darkness gives way to light. Winter gives way to spring. Remember the daffodil? Behold! All that’s true of the daffodil is true of you, too. Beauty always breaks through, my friends. And you, dear one, aren’t the exception to this natural and spiritual order of things.

PINIT

But what if it feels like your life is stuck in Good Friday? What if brokenness and all of its effects are all you can see in this season? What if all this talk of resurrection and abundant life doesn’t feel like it applies to you? What if you’ve been waiting for months or years or decades, and the larger story of beauty hasn’t burst forth from your brokenness?

PINIT

Brave and beautiful one, if that’s where you are right now, you are not alone. I’ve been there. I’ve shared some of those dark places with you. And while I’m not in one of those places today, I haven’t forgotten the pain of those places. Oh, those places hurt something fierce. They feel like the tomb before the stone is rolled away. They threaten to extinguish hope, steal joy and snuff out abundant life. And that’s exactly what the enemy of your soul intends. The enemy opposes everything Jesus came to bring. {John 10:10}

BUT GOD.

Those two words are my two favorites in all of Scripture. {Ephesians 2:4} BUT GOD is the story of Easter. Evil, darkness, brokenness, death and shame looked like they won on Good Friday. BUT GOD. He had a different plan. A plan to bring life out of death, beauty out of brokenness, good out of evil. {Genesis 50:20} It’s who He is and what He does. Not just for Jesus, but for YOU!

PINIT

When we surrender our heart to Jesus, believing in His life, death and resurrection, all that’s true for Him becomes true for us. All of His radiant beauty, lavish love, incomparable glory, ridiculous righteousness, abundant life and resurrection power is yours the very hour you believe. It may take a lifetime to take in all that’s available to you – to let it trickle down deep into your heart and flow back out in your life – but it’s available to you this very day.

{Don’t believe me? Check out the story of the criminal who Jesus said would be with him in paradise. They hung side by side on their crosses, and in his final breath, a criminal saw Jesus for who He was: Savior and Son of God. And in that very second, all that belonged to Jesus became his. No time to earn it, work for it or prove himself. The grace of God was on full display!}

PINIT

Bravehearted Beauties, if you you feel stuck in your own version of Good Friday, take heart! Your Easter is coming. Your Jesus has come! He knows suffering and sorrow like no other…and brings redemption and beauty to every bit of brokenness.

I’m believing in the resurrection and redemption of all things…even on the dark Fridays of our lives. How about you? Will you dare to believe?

Happy Easter, brave and beautiful ones!

P.S. Going way back to 2010, here are my thoughts on Good Friday. And quotes I still love.

P.P.S For an honest, encouraging conversation on hope {and losing hope}, I think you’ll enjoy this podcast: “A Living Hope.” I especially love listening to my dear friend from college, Morgan Snyder. Honored to have been used by God to introduce him to Jesus 20+ years ago. Heaven is going to be a blast with Morgan in it! {Part Two is coming Monday. Perfect timing for anyone who has the post-Easter blues.}