Loneliness and Holy Week

I was alone last Easter. I woke up to an empty apartment, fed my yowling cats, put on something that looked like I put extra holy thought into it, and made my way a couple blocks over to the school my church meets in. The congregation I’m a part of is small, fitting comfortably in a high school auditorium, and it is typically easy for me to spot a familiar face to sit with, but by the time I rolled up five minutes before the 10 AM service, the seats were already lined with strangers sporting fluorescent dresses and lint-rolled suits. I picked a seat towards the back and tried to ignore the emotions that were grabbing at my throat. 

I couldn’t tell you a single word that the pastor said or the songs that we worshiped to, but I can tell you that the two little girls a couple rows in front of me spun to the music and smiled widely at each other, causing the dam of my emotions to burst wide open. Once the service was over, I made small talk with friends and their significant others who had plans to go to their parents' houses or lay around enjoying each other's company the rest of the day. I got into my car, dialed my mom’s number, and cried hysterically on the phone for the next 30 minutes.

I don’t often retreat into what I like to call “sad girl single”, but I spent the rest of the day being nothing but aware of how utterly alone I was. I worked a 4-hour shift for my work-from-home customer service job, made some food, turned on Netflix, and scrolled mindlessly through my phone, huffing at all the perfectly curated pictures of togetherness. 

Feeling lonely around a holiday does two things to me: it makes me ache for what once was and what is yet to come. I am both confronted by a deep nostalgia of what it was like to be a kid collecting Easter eggs and laughing with my cousins in the backyard and a deep desire to have a family of my own—a family that is obligated to keep me company on Easter. In my mind, my loneliness often plays out like that scene from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants where America Ferrera’s character runs away from her family. When she returns, instead of finding them frantically looking for her, they are gathered around the dining room table, laughing and sharing a meal. In that moment, she believes that she is left out, that everyone else has each other but her. My loneliness tells me this lie, too. It paints a picture of everyone else being gathered around a table and me standing outside in the darkness by myself, longing to be included. 

I say all this to say, I am incredibly aware of the ways that we are all having to stand face to face with our loneliness these days. The loneliness we were once able to appease with a full schedule and places to be is now all-too-eager to keep us company as we take walks and work without co-workers and watch Tiger King. We are all learning what it’s like to live in close quarters with our own versions of Loneliness, a new roommate that is not too keen in giving us much personal space, and now we must do it in the midst of Holy Week. The grand finale of this week is a holiday that carries with it a collection of memories and hopes for me. It may carry some memories and hopes for you, too. Whatever your relationship with Easter is, it looks different this year. We don’t get to be with the people we want to be with or do the things we want to do, and that fact carries with it an array of different emotions.

Loneliness is complicated. I often subscribe to the notion that it is linear—that as life progresses and we collect more friends and accolades and a marriage certificate that loneliness begins to pack its bags and hits the road. But, much to my dismay, this is not true. Just because you have people around you doesn’t mean that you feel connected to them. And even if you do feel connected to the people around you, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas of disconnect in your life. I live with two of my best friends right now. I genuinely love being around them. We know how to have a lot of unadulterated, ridiculous fun and I can talk to them about anything. If I have to be trapped in my apartment for an indefinite amount of time, I could not be more grateful to be trapped with them. AND I miss my other friends. I miss getting drinks at a neighborhood bar on a Friday night. I miss seeing my therapist in person. I miss hugs. I also can’t ignore the ache in me that comes up when I see a family kicking around a soccer ball in the park or a couple holding hands walking down the street. My typical “I love being free and having fun in my twenties” mentality no longer applies and it feels impossible to bury the desire that comes up for what I don’t yet have. 

Every year when Holy Week comes around, I find myself drawn most not to the Crucifixion or the resurrection, but the three days in between. Those three days have historically represented a lot for me, but mostly they represent waiting. Waiting for change; waiting for healing; waiting for hope. They are the days that the world held its breath to see if the promise of new life would be fulfilled or if it would fall flat. I often find myself reflecting on what people would have felt during this time. They must have felt afraid and hopeless—they must have wanted so badly to believe it might be true that a Savior could overcome death, but everything in them doubted instead. It’s not hard to imagine that they would have felt lonely—they would have longed for the days they had with Jesus and ached for the potential hope of the days to come. I will not pretend to know all the theological intricacies of those three days, but I do know it’s likely that Jesus felt lonely, too. He was separated. He was without those he loved. Although he knew the plan’s timeline, he was not yet experiencing the joy of resurrection.  

Doesn’t this sound like the collective, global season humanity is in right now? We wait with a little bit of hope and a whole lot of doubt and try to see the good while everything we consider normal gets uprooted and flipped on its head. I find myself getting caught in nostalgia, feeling the grief of remembering coffee dates and collaboration and live music, and I dream of days filled with patio-sitting, plan-making celebrations. In the midst of all of this, I wonder how I can experience Holy Week differently this year, not by ignoring the unprecedented loneliness and circumstances around me, but by leaning into them. How can I connect more wholeheartedly with the Easter story by acknowledging that I am smack dab in the middle of a time between loss and new life?

I won’t pretend to know the depths of your loneliness right now, but I do know that you’re not alone. You are not standing outside a window watching everyone be together without you. However you’re experiencing your loneliness, know that it is OK. I’m tired of seeing advice about the right way to work out or cook food or manage your time these days, so I won’t give it about loneliness. You and I have never experienced anything like this before, and we are all doing the best we can.

But I do wonder, no matter what your relationship is with Easter, how we can create time this week to see hope springing up around us. Even as we wait, the magnolias bloom and the sun shines and neighbors wave to each other from six feet away. Just as the story of the Crucifixion always comes with the hope of resurrection, no matter how many weeks we have left of winter when the groundhog makes his annual appearance, we are always promised spring, and spring means new life.