Goodbye yellow brick road.

Today is Easter Sunday, or as the current evangelical fashion would have it, Resurrection Sunday.

My grandmother lovingly crafted cheery fancy easter dresses for my daughters, one in pink and green flowers, one in blue and white. Pale happy colors of spring. Of the season where all is new and exciting. I dressed for a funeral. Charcoal and black and dark shades. Of the season of death and dismemberment.

I had been on the fence about attending church. From my pit of doubt it seemed false to go and celebrate something about which I am so perplexed. But part of me thought it might tip the scales for me. That I may hear the words I needed to hear, that I may find comfort and rest and release from my torment. And then there was the part of me that thought it was just easier to go with the flow of my past 20-some years and dress up and sing pretty and smile sweetly as if nothing were going on beneath my surface. This was the argument that won.

So at 7:00 this morning, my cheery girls and my melancholy self headed to the sunrise service. Driving directly into an over-sized sun felt much like the bright light people who have almost died or sort of died or really died and then not been dead talk about. Trent Reznor sang my own feelings over the radio as I drove further into the light. “I wear this crown of s**t, on my liar’s chair. Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair.” I started to well up with tears. This was what dying must feel like. Perhaps I was dying. “What have I become, my sweetest friend? Everyone I know goes away in the end.”

I don’t remember arriving in the parking lot, but I found myself entering the doors to the victorious Easter greetings I had warmly embraced in the past. I fought back tears and fought to find a seat. I sat down. The chair felt solid. I did not. The music began and I stood to sing, because it was the thing to do, but I could not issue a sound from my lips. I was paralyzed. I was numb. As the pastor began to talk about the wonder of Christ’s life and death and life again my eyes surveyed the people around me. People I know well and love dearly. People whose sureness and happiness I am desperately jealous of. People whose peace and joy makes me angry, because it exacerbates my lack of such things. People that reflect my former self, and no matter how hard I try I cannot find my way back there.

From the pulpit I hear that while we might find blood sacrifices to be archaic, it is only because of Jesus that we can say that. He rid us of our need for those. And I am confronted head on by my confusion, as the study of those blood sacrifices was a major catalyst for the doubt in which I now find myself. It’s not the only thing that rubs me the wrong way…it just gave license to the other issues to wreak havoc on me this year. I wait anxiously for the pastor to explain that it is a hard thing to understand, that I am not alone in my unrest and that there is an easy fix. But he doesn’t. We don’t talk about doubts on Resurrection Sunday. The pastor says that this is the first day of the rest of our lives. And I know that this much is true.

The service nears the end, with a long line of people waiting to be buried and resurrected with Christ through baptism. The tears I have willed away all morning are not having it, and begin to stream down my cheeks. The nice thing about crying in church is that it makes you seem spiritually sensitive. No one assumes that you are crying because you wish you weren’t there. There are boxes of tissues at each aisle for the spiritually sensitive tears, but I don’t move towards them. They are not for me. No one has said this, but I wouldn’t feel right wiping my godless snot with tissues provided through offering. These people are earnest and sincere and I feel badly about being amongst them, let alone taking their kleenex.

I don’t know how to withdraw from this. Not just the service, but the church in general. I leave the building wilted. And that is how I sit now. In my charcoal and black and dark shades.