On Holy Saturday (April 11 for us Eastern Orthodox this year), every member of our little family began to cough. Oh, it was that dusty fan we turned on for the first time this spring, we said, and since only confirmed flu or vomiting would keep us from Pascha services after all the trial of Lent and Holy Week (the spiritual trials built into these seasons and more besides for us this year), we carried on: dyeing the eggs rusty bloody red, packing the Pascha basket with prosciutto and chocolate, gathering cameras and candles and our two daughters in beautiful dresses, and packing all of this -- plus blankets for the sleeping girls and plates of food for breaking the fast in the middle of the night -- into our tiny car. I remember we hardly fit everything in, shoved in between my husband's giant textbooks and strange chunks of metal for his senior design project, and rode through the darkness so excited. (Well, we did. The girls were fast asleep within 5 minutes of pulling out onto the road.) We sang "Christ is Risen" and shouted "Christ is risen!" and the children of our parish slept on the floor like piles of puppies. We were in an empty storefront building for that week, and our procession took us at midnight before the garish neon sign of the tanning salon next door, and we ate obscene amounts of bacon and cheese and ice cream on paper plates in the back of the otherwise silent building at 2am.
It was beautiful, as Pascha always is. But the coughing...
I think everyone feels like they've been in a train wreck when they wake up on Pascha morning. Most of us get only 4 or 5 hours of sleep, those of us who are parents have probably spent hours wrangling kids full of excitement and lack of rest, and nearly everyone has made at least one regrettable decision when breaking their fast with their friends and church family in the midst of the night. (Bacon, cheese, ice cream, remember? And sticky bun cake. And sausage. And...)
But this was something else. A cold had hit us all so bad it was difficult to lift our heads from our pillows, and every one of us was suffering to a greater or lesser degree. That day the baby and my husband had the worst of it, and as the week went on we all cycled in and out of feeling like death and simply feeling puny. We missed the Pascha picnic with the barbecue and bounce house... we missed all sorts of things. Nearly two weeks have passed and while we're all well into recovery, it really feels like life has just passed us by for all of this time. Add in my husband pulling some all-nighters to work on a group design project (we're too old for that these days, I have decided), and family life has been very much on its head. Instead of the rich delicious dishes I'd planned for Bright Week (the week following Pascha), we ate convenience items and frozen juice bars to scrape by each day. Instead of reading through all of our books on Easter and the Resurrection accounts, we lay in the bed watching Edwardian Farm while I begged my brain to stay in my poor throbbing head. (My 4 year old wants to go to England and meet Ruth, Alex, and Peter now.) Instead of picnics we gathered under the blankets in the bed fighting various stages of fever for days on end.
So, this is how life is. We have the best of intentions, and they come to nothing (or at least not much). We think the joy of the Resurrection is reliant on steak pies and Scotch eggs and wonder what it will be without them. And to be honest, it hasn't felt like much of a celebration, and I regret that, but at the same time we know -- we have to know -- that this joy is not reliant on us. We didn't call the dead out of the grave, and we never could have, and we never will. We don't even have control over a tiny virus, too small even to see invading our entire family at once, just in time for the holiest days of our year. All of this control we think we have is fleeting and feeble and not worth very much, when it comes down to it. And yes I feel this is deeply a spiritual message, about trust in God and confidence in His plans for us and for this earth, but it's not only that. Even if you don't feel there is a God who is in control, or do not know Him, eventually you have to realize that, at least, you are not the one in control of it all. Nor I.
And learn how to fill your lungs, and hold your breath, and move through it.
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