The Middle of the Story

(An Easter Reflection That Doesn’t Start Where You’d Expect)

If you’d asked me as a kid what Easter was all about, I could’ve rattled off the Sunday school answers. Cross. Tomb. Empty. Jesus is alive.

And I believed it. I did.

But if I’m honest, the biggest thing I remembered year after year was the dress.

There was always a dress—usually pastel, always stiff and itchy. Sometimes it had one of those wide, shiny ribbons that tied in a bow big enough to block your view of the pew in front of you.

After church, we’d all gather out front for pictures—pretending we weren’t starving and hoping our hair hadn’t completely given up for the day. But it was tradition. And someone was always trying to get everyone to stand still and smile like we hadn’t just spent two hours in church trying to behave.

Then we’d head home to a table full of food: a big ham, potato salad, fried apples, green beans, rolls… all the good stuff. My mom didn’t do anything halfway, especially not on Easter. It was a celebration in every sense of the word.

There were always Easter baskets waiting for us, too—plastic grass everywhere and those hollow chocolate bunnies that looked better than they tasted. But my favorite was always the big, often homemade, peanut butter egg. Still is.

And I love those memories. I treasure them.

Now, years later, I see Easter a little differently. I’ve lived long enough—and lost enough—to know this isn’t just a story we dress up for.

Easter is for the weary. For the ones who know how heavy Friday was. And how long Saturday felt.

Because as much as we love to skip to the ending—He is risen!—we forget that for the disciples, that weekend was anything but clear. It didn’t feel like a holy story unfolding. It felt like heartbreak. Like confusion. Like grief without explanation.

They didn’t know the ending like we do. They were stuck in Saturday—somewhere between what just happened and what do we do now?

And if we’re honest, that’s where a lot of us spend our time, isn’t it? In the middle. In the mess. In the waiting between heartbreak and healing.

But that’s why Easter matters so much.

Because it wasn’t just about the resurrection—it was about restoration. It was God’s way of saying: Death doesn’t win. Fear doesn’t win. The silence you’re sitting in right now is not the end of the story.

The tomb is still empty. And because of that, hope is still alive.

Not in a vague, everything-will-be-fine kind of way—but in the anchored, eternal, Jesus-already-won kind of way.

Easter reminds me that God does His best work in the dark. That silence isn’t absence. And that even when I can’t see what He’s doing, I can trust that He’s not finished.

It means I don’t have to hold it all together.
It means the pressure’s off—because Jesus already did what I never could.
It means I can live with hope.

Not because life is easy.

But because grace is real. And Jesus is alive.