It’s the morning you sleep in late, enjoy buckwheat pancakes, and stay in your jammies til noon. Or maybe it’s the morning everyone is up early and grabs a Pop-Tart before another long day of sports tournament competition. Either way, this day each week is different from the others.
There’s no school carpool line, no scrambling to find homework assignments that are overdue, or looking through cupboards for lunch options to fill the brown paper sack on the counter. It has a different pace, a different focus, a different rhythm. Saturdays can represent those “free” days that can fill our hearts and homes with the sweet memories! For those of you who would enjoy some fresh Saturday family fun ideas, check out our list posted on Heart of Womanhood Facebook page. Add your own ideas to encourage others.
But Saturdays can also represent those days or seasons when your routine is interrupted. Your rhythm is stifled. And as a girl who never really had great “natural rhythm” anyway, times like these throw me off balance. I do enjoy variety, but I also find comfort in the routine, the predictable. These kinds of Saturdays are unpredictable, out of control, and seem eternally long. Sometimes Saturdays breathe welcomed life into my heart and my family. Sometimes the “Saturdays” of life seem to last too long, drain us dry, and suffocate our hope.
We’ve had our share of “Saturdays.” Times when the routine is broken. The comfortable is challenged. The waiting leans heavy on our hearts. It’s cleaning out the closet full of collected marital discord. It’s waiting for a month of Saturdays for the sorting and restoring to occur, for love to return and to be rekindled. It’s waiting for hours in doctors’ offices to seek physical healing for an injured daughter only to leave with more questions than answers. We wait a month of Saturdays before her healing appears. It’s the Saturdays when jobs are lost, finances are uncertain. It’s when our daughters can’t seem to find their God-given rhythm at school, on the team, in friendships, in finding the next step to take. It’s holding a daughter close while she waits for healing from a broken heart.
Yes ma’am. Like the pages on our calendars, “Saturdays” keep coming, don’t they? So how are we to handle “Saturdays” as mommas, daughters, and grandmothers? With Good Friday fast approaching, here are five secrets found in the Easter story for making all our “Saturdays” GOOD too:
#1 “Good Saturday” girls remember that God understands.
God understands our Saturdays like no one else. Good Friday brought the cruel death of God’s innocent Son. As a Father, He watched the whole tragic chapter unfold. Just like our “Saturdays” leave us hanging, the closing lines on Friday’s chapter left Jesus hanging (literally) too. “Father, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) When we flip in scripture to read what happened on that first “Good Saturday,” it’s like reading the most suspenseful cliff-hanger sentence followed by a blank page. Nothing. No words. No action. Saturdays like these are painful. But both our Father and His Son endured this pain of silence, of stillness, of separation, of sadness. They endured the feeling of being forsaken, alone, abandoned. To make the most of our Saturdays, we must remember that Jesus understands. He endured His Saturday alone so that we will never have to.
As daughters, it’s healing to know we are tethered to the Son through our Saturdays. As mommas, we can possess renewed confidence knowing that our Heavenly Father fully understands. Good Friday did not appear “good” until viewed from Easter Sunday’s perspective. God will impart to us His powerful parental perspective when Saturdays roll around. Knowing that God understands the big picture can empower us to stand up under everything we do not yet fully understand as we face our own “Good Saturdays!”
#2 “Good Saturday” girls stay obediently close to their Savior
For me, when “Saturdays” come, my restless heart is tempted to race around and fix the problems rather than simply rest and remain faithful. I am tempted to run away from the hurt, the tragedy, the “tomb”…rather than run toward Jesus!
These Easter snapshots from scripture offer an inspiring glimpse into how the women closest to Jesus responded to Good Friday AND Saturday. “It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath (Saturday) was about to begin. The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the Sabbath in obedience to the commandments.” (Luke 23:55-56) “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.” (John 20:1)
These women leave us two faithful footprints to follow when we face our own “Saturdays.” First, they stayed obedient to God’s words. They simply kept doing the last things that Jesus told them. They rested in Him and continued in faithful obedience to the scripture. God’s Word was their constant when all else became shifting sand.
Secondly, these women ran to the place where they last saw Jesus. When Saturdays come, we will be wise to keep close to our Savior in obedience with our hearts and our habits, with our faith and with our feet. Heart of Womanhood studies are creative tools God can use for our “preparation days.” By encouraging moms and daughters to creatively learn and live out God’s truths seven days each week, when Saturdays come around, we are far more likely to run towards Jesus and rest in Him!
#3 “Good Saturday” girls open the door to upper room friends.
The famous quote, “It’s Friday, Sunday’s a comin’” skips right over Saturday, doesn’t it? In John 20, the only thing we know about the first “Good Saturday” is that the disciples (and the women) are huddled together in the upper room. Doors locked. Confused. Fearful. But together. Sometimes our first response to Saturdays is isolation. Time spent alone with your Savior is crucial. No doubt. But like the disciples on that first “Good Saturday,” time with an inner circle of friends in the upper room is key.
As mommas we need upper room friends. Friends with whom you can share your inner most feelings. Like the disciples, we need friends who can remind us of what Jesus said, of what God promises when Saturdays bring silence to our soul. God can use these upper room friends to keep the windows of hope open. Pull up the blinds of faith while we seem to be locked up in an upper room for a season of Saturdays.
As mommas, we can also become upper room friends for our daughters. Like us, they need upper room friends to share their innermost feelings with too…especially on “Saturdays.” Heart of Womanhood is dedicated to developing these upper room relationships. Building our mutual trust with them every Sunday through Friday will set us up for their “Saturdays.” They need us to share with them the truth of God’s Word that will unlock the faith needed to live through their Saturdays. To live beyond their Saturdays.
#4 “Good Saturday” girls trust God’s heart when we don’t see His hands.
John 20:19-20 paints another Easter week scene for us as His “Good Saturday” girls. “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you!”
The disciples wanted to see Jesus’ hands. That’s totally me. Like His closest friends during the first Easter week, when I am facing a “Saturday” I want Jesus to show me His hand! I want to walk by sight, not by faith.
We beg God to show us His hand…especially on our “Saturdays,” don’t we? For the disciples (and for His girls) Jesus doesn’t always show up when we expect or how we expect but HE ALWAYS SHOWS UP! Always.
Remembering how God has SHOWED UP through our past Saturdays provides positive fuel for our faith to make the most of today. Our marriage survived the storm and has stayed anchored for 32 years (and counting). Our daughter received miraculous healing after three compound concussions and 11 months of intense 24/7 head pain. Countless hurdles have been jumped (though sometimes with skinned knees). Expenses have been provided for, friendships survived, tests passed, decisions made, hearts healed.
As we wait to see His hand today, we can have His “Peace be with us” as we trust His heart. Without fail, God’s fingers of faith point us to Christ’s cross and empty tomb. For this momma, when it’s hard for me to trust, it helps this “visual” girl to simply picture the cross of my Jesus…in the shape of the letter “t”! Like the line from the Lauren Daigle song, You Alone, “The cross reminds my heart to Trust.”
We can (by faith) hold onto the nail-scarred hands extended for us on Good Friday as we wait to see His Resurrected hand revealed (by sight) on our Sundays. God’s Word consistently holds up Christ’s empty cross behind us to fuel our trust and His empty tomb before us so we can transcend anything we face on the Saturdays in this life!
#5 “Good Saturday” girls praise God in the hallway until He opens the door.
John 20:19-20 (above) certainly reveals that during most of our “Saturdays” Jesus shows us His hands only after walking into our situations in unexpected ways. Many times He doesn’t use the door we expect. Where does that leave us as God’s “Saturday” girls? Where does that lead us as God’s “Saturday” girls? When God doesn’t open the door, as “Good Saturday” girls we have the honor to praise Him in the hallway! No matter how dark or silent the hallway may appear on your Saturday, we can always praise Him for the promise of Sunday!
On Good Friday, the followers of Jesus wept. On Easter Sunday, John 20:20 says, “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” As His modern-day female disciples, we can live through our “Saturdays” with Sunday’s perspective. If we praise Him only on our Sundays, we sing a sweet song of thanksgiving. But if we praise Him through our “Saturdays,” we sing a glorious song of faith! And faith pleases God. HOW powerful to imagine all God’s “Good Saturday” girls praising Him right now! Whether you are enduring Friday’s pain, Saturday’s uncertainty, or Sunday’s victory! Whether you are in the upper room or the hallway…Let’s sing His praise NOW. Let’s dance His praise now. Let’s not wait until Sunday rolls around to praise Him.
At random times, one of my daughters will announce “It’s time for a dance party!” That announcement is followed by playing a favorite song from her phone while the rest of us drop what we are currently doing. Together we join her to dance in the kitchen, or bedroom…or even our hallway. With that same spirit, this Easter, and every “Saturday” this life brings, we invite YOU (moms, daughters, and grandmothers) to join this awkward momma and her daughters by dancing in our hallways.
We know that Saturdays will come. And Saturdays may throw off our natural rhythm. But even if you are like me and my daughters (with very little “natural rhythm”) we can choose to…“Dance believing that the music will soon begin.” So how can we make the most of our Saturdays? Together, let’s dance through ‘em (with God’s “supernatural rhythm”) confident that Sunday’s powerful tune will soon begin!