McMusing: Living In the In-Between

A reflection on the collision of life and traditions.

Today is the traditional day for a McMusing. It is also a space between Good Friday and Easter. It is a day that ends four months of searching for medical solutions and the beginning of the wait for a liver match. Will that be days? Weeks? A month? No one seems to think it will go beyond that, but we are living in limbo, in the liminal space of waiting and finding peace in the midst of a threatening illness that has only one possible solution.

As human beings, we tend to think very linearly. There is a beginning and an ending and all the points in between. It reminds me of how as a math teacher, I would explain that the plane and the lines within it actually had no end, but all the images make it look like it is contained—in a box.

We call all sorts of things lines that are not actually lines because the human mind needs beginnings and endings. Even symbolically, a line feels like it has an ending.

I consider all of this on my current journey which has a vague beginning and seemingly has no end point—at least not one the I would choose as a good option. Even then . . . in this liminal space between Good Friday and Easter, what felt like an ending to Jesus’ followers wasn’t actually an ending. It was simply a point on a line—or the small space between two points that could be filled with many other points.

The space between those two days had so many more points than the timeline in scripture includes. There were conversations, there were tears, there was grief, there were hugs, there were strategy meetings that dissolved in the unknowing. Possibly most important was the search for meaning in a new normal that no one expected nor wanted.

I am there today. Gathering myself for the next that I can barely imagine. My husband having a liver transplant was not something I signed up for, but it is my new normal. Today is filled with in-between points as I transition from my in-law's lovely home, back to the hospitality house that is becoming my home away from home. We do not know what tomorrow will bring, but one of those in-between points holds hope and I am tightly holding onto it.