Why Good Friday is Horrifying to Me

Before Caleb died we would go to the Good Friday service. I would participate and feel sad but mostly just try to make myself feel sad. I really did not like the day and always wanted it to be over so that Easter could be here. Looking back I can see that most of how that day was spent was just going through the motions. I didnt have the lived experience to really enter into it.

But then my baby died and it was horror. We buried him on the Tuesday of Holy Week. Then Friday came and not knowing how different we were, my husband and I tried to go to the Good Friday services. We made it to the door before I literally collapsed in his arms with grief. I could not go to another funeral-and that is what Good Friday service felt like for me. I was knee deep in mourning my own son, I had nothing left inside of me to mourn for someone else's son.

Last year I thought about attending Good Friday services, but again the horror kept me away. To think that we would re-live with words the exact things that happened on that day made me sick to my stomach. If someone told me that once a year we were going to read aloud the dialogue that took place in the doctors office the day Caleb died, I would be terrified.

And that is what Good Friday has become for me-a reliving of day Jesus died. I have gotten to know Mary so well since Caleb died and have come to see Good Friday as the day of Mary's child's funeral. The day where we show up to recall how terrible and horrific a death he suffered and then mourn with her. This year I think I have worked up the courage to go tomorrow. I want to, Im just scared. Scared that I will literally be weeping uncontrollably in my pew why others wonder what is wrong with me. Its funny because now I wonder how others can not weep with such emotion. I wonder how as a Church we can even stand through the whole Good Friday Service. We killed God. We killed Mary's baby. Its so much more than words to me now, its a part of my lived experience. And that makes it that much harder to go back into. But I want to, for Mary's sake (not that she needs it), but I want to show her that I care, that Im just as grief stricken over her son's murder as I am over my own son's mysterious death.

"Father,into your hands I commend my spirit"Luke 23:46