Bright Sadness
Katherine Stevenson
This time last year my husband, Austin, and I had just found out that we were expecting a baby - we were overjoyed. But by the time Ash Wednesday came around, the pregnancy nausea had really begun to kick in. I remember sitting in the Corpus Christi chapel, head in hand, chewing on a ginger candy to fight the nausea and willing myself to make it through the service. When we started singing the hymn ‘Forty Days and Forty Nights’ one particular verse stuck out to me:
Let us thine endurance share
And awhile from joys abstain
With thee watching unto prayer
Strong with thee to suffer pain
I remember being struck by the thought that it was fitting to be entering the Lenten season at the same time I was going through my first trimester: endurance, abstention & suffering all with the anticipation and hope of what’s to come. This formed in me a ‘bright sadness’. (I still have the photo I quickly took of the hymnal to mark the moment).
Forty days and forty nights came and went, and my extreme nausea carried on, painful and debilitating—the expected reprieve didn’t come. At the same time, Easter morning came and went without us gathering together to celebrate the joy of the resurrection. My nausea continued for another 12 weeks, the pandemic raged on unabated; Lent, it seemed, had never come to an end.
Seasons of suffering don’t always end in complete relief and the immense joy of a new life, but this one did with the birth of our daughter, and for that I’m ever thankful. There are those facing prolonged suffering with no hope of reprieve and many are still feeling the struggles of 2020. The lessons of Lent – abstention, endurance, and even suffering – draw us closer to God and open our eyes anew to his grace. Lent gives us a chance, not to embrace our suffering as if it was good in itself, but to direct our suffering to goodness. It also reminds us of the needs of those who suffer in our midst.
Keep, O keep us, Saviour dear
Ever constant by thy side
That with thee we may appear
At the eternal Eastertide
