When the Lenten season began, I shared that my heart was in a disheveled space. It was a devastating work week, filled with some harsh realities of the world.

It was also the week Milo decided to make my reading nook his targeted area for the day – perhaps maybe feeling moved to also taste the Word of God as he shredded my Bible.

It wasn’t the entrance into the Lenten season I planned.
Y’all, I was planning for a soft reflection – quiet moments of prayer each morning and experiencing Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday with Nick by attending the corresponding Mass service for the first time.

It was a buttoned-up picture in my head. And just like my Bible, my plans were shredded.

Instead, I got 40ish days of new moments that often left my heart both wrecked and humbled. My Lenten experience ended up looking just like that first week.

Soft reflection morphed into face-to-face moments with God, the truth of how Jesus walked on Earth and the painful reconciliation that crowds of people – people just like me – literally called for Him to be crucified.

My faith walk as an adult, where I’ve been trusted to make decisions on my own, has been wayward at best over the last ten years.

I know it sounds hokey and Sunday School-like to say; but, this season specifically has been deliberately marked by God in ways I’m still trying to navigate.

As a child, Easter Sunday was the shining moment of church throughout the year. The day was stacked with a church service, family lunch, Easter Egg hunts and Sunday dresses (that I typically fought mom on wearing – my blue jeans were just fine thankyouverymuch).

I also asked for Easter chicken tenders because ham is at the top of a very short list of foods I will not eat. But, I digress.

It was always special and I remember understanding the premise of what is real about Easter. But this year, I’ve seen the week and this season from a very raw perspective – one that began at the beginning of Lent but one that really hit its height last week during Palm Sunday.

I’ve been attending Mass with Nick for almost a year. I’ve grown accustomed to the readings and recitations (and the sitting-standing-sitting), but I didn’t expect the part of this particular service where, as a church, we took on the role of the crowd in the account of the crucifixion.

As the priest, deacon and elder read through the moments that led to Jesus being hoisted upon the cross, the church read together parts assigned to the crowd on what is categorically one of the worst days in history.

Together, we read, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

It punched me.

I re-read the passages again to see if the church was also assigned other parts as if there just weren’t enough cast members to play single roles. Nope. We were only assigned the role of the crowd.

Like anyone who has been punched, my gut reaction was to be both offended and defensive.

How dare they assign all of us the role of the crowd?
How dare they assume that “I” – a Christian – wouldn’t be Team Jesus standing on the hill, mourning with Mary.

Yes – I hear myself and how ridiculous that sounds.

The service left me frayed, internally processing a feeling I wasn’t sure how to categorize.

I quickly recognized, however, that my gut reaction stemmed from a very raw part of my heart that exhibited shame.

Shame for the moments I don’t always present the best version of myself.
Shame for when my heart feels entitled to things I don’t deserve.
Shame because I absolutely deserved to read the role of the crowd.

My feelings of being offended quickly transitioned to being humbled.
And, this is where God really began to teach me about a Bible story I thought I knew but had never fully assessed in my heart.

The truth is – I’m not sure I’ve ever looked inward enough to know where I might place myself in the journey to the cross.

It’s always been very easy to read the Easter story with an outside perspective – to point at the crowd and be mad at them for what they did or to point at Judas and ask, “How? How did you still betray Him after He told you what would happen?” Same for Peter.

But y’all… the reality is that I’m just as selfish as Judas.
I am just as impulsive as Peter.
And, It is very likely I would have been yelling with the crowd.

Yet, He still died to serve as a bridge across a divide we could never cross on our own.

I’ve spent the last week trying to process the heaviness associated with the week, to reconcile how good God is and how undeserving I am.

Good Friday was messy and raw – filled with all that is harsh about people and the world.
And even though that day on a hill was nothing shy of difficult, dark and devastating – Sunday still happened.

Because of Good Friday, the plan of God prevailed and the blood of Jesus saved the world.

Regardless if I had been standing in the crowd calling for his crucifixion, the blood of Jesus saved me.

I don’t know what message you need to hear this week, today or this weekend – but that’s one I hope I never forget.