It’s Good Friday. Let it be Good Friday.

Don’t rush Easter morning. Don’t skip ahead to “the good part.” Don’t pretend today never happened and Jesus isn’t dead. Don’t fail to mourn or be heartbroken or rest in this space of confusion and grief.

We need today. Don’t tell me about tomorrow and don’t tell me about Sunday, not yet.

Today we learn how to have our hearts shattered by tragedy and our lives torn apart by the unexpected because tomorrow we will have friend who has lost a child, been diagnosed with a terminal disease, remembers they were abused as a child, or learns their spouse has been unfaithful.

Today we learn how to fall apart because tomorrow might be our day to lose a loved one, get into an accident, or sit before the doctor.

On those tomorrows that will bring pain and suffering, we will need to understand deeply what Good Friday feels like. We will need to know how to sit with and in suffering that will try to overwhelm us.

And we will need to know how to sit in that space without trying to rush to Easter Sunday, desperately grasping for a bright side, a reason, or a light at the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes there is no light. At least, none that can be perceived by the human eye nor the human heart.

It is Good Friday. Let it be Good Friday. Let us know and learn how things fall apart without magic instructions showing us how to put them back together. Life offers no such cheat sheet so we must learn about confusion and chaos and falling apart.