Reflections on Connection-Centered Leadership - Issue No. 13: Saturday's Choice

Easter weekend this year had me thinking about a day many of us skip over or remember as a byline. We know about the crucifixion on Friday, then Shabbat (the weekly holy day in Judaism), which requires all work and superfluous movement to stop.

What is made to bring connection and remembrance to families and communities was marked by fear, trepidation, and grief for those who were following Jesus, especially those closest to Him.

As I was thinking about the Saturday of Holy Week, I thought about the unnatural calm after the storm. I mention this in Whom He Raised. After a traumatic event, it’s hard to know what to do. There’s an emptiness inside. The brain longs to reorient to some semblance of balance, but there’s no going back to life as usual before the trauma.

Research shows it takes three to five days for the disorientation to dissipate and clear thinking to return. After life-altering events, such as untimely death, there’s no fixed time. And grief is a funny thing that refuses to stay in neat boundaries or be relegated to appropriate times. It bleeds into everything.

On the first Easter Saturday, not only were the close followers of Jesus in fear for their own lives, but they were also overcome by grief. Grief for the friend and leader they’d lost in such a horrid manner. Grief for the loss of a life they thought they were writing one way that had an abrupt plot twist. This was one of those moments where the ground is yanked out from under them, and they sat not really knowing what to do. I imagine at least one of the things they were doing was praying as they’d been taught.

Early Sunday morning, once work and movement could resume, the women went to the tomb. They found Him. They found joy.

The quietness of Saturday comes with a choice. After we’ve received the call we hoped would never come. After we’ve lost someone far too soon. After tragedy and trauma, we have a quiet Saturday. What will we do with that Saturday when the unknown of Sunday still looms?

May I suggest faith over fear? Both are unknowns that require projecting our thoughts into frames of catastrophizing or hope for what comes next. We all have chapters in our lives we don’t want to be written, or we wish we could skip. It’s just part of the journey.

The women who knew Jesus faced the morning with purpose. They led themselves well with hope steeped in optimism. They got up to do the work that still needed to be done and were rewarded beyond what they could have asked or imagined. Leading themselves well in that moment to do the hard thing forged a path for others to follow and brought the Good News to many who had no hope.

Their choice–resolution–on that Saturday is still impacting all of us thousands of years later. That is leadership and faith that changes legacies. And that quiet Saturday when we don’t know quite what to do but choose to do it anyway is still part of the leadership journey for us all.

In Connection-Centered Leadership, awareness that leads to vertical connection gives us the right orientation to realize we don’t have to have it all figured out and that we are not the center of the universe. We just have to know the One who is. This leads to an inward connection that honors God and self, the overflow of which creates opportunities for outward connection that creates movement and changes lives.

May you choose faith over fear in the decisions you face today and every time you are faced with a quiet Saturday.

— Melissa, Architect of Connection-Centered Leadership

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