While normally Easter is a sunny, colorful day… I woke up somber.

On the way to church tears fell. No reason, just release.

I sat in church and accepted it.

I felt dad’s absence. I felt a friend’s concern of an extended job search. I felt a friend’s pain of her husband’s addiction. I felt a friend’s abyss with the death of his mother, now both parents gone physically. I felt my friend’s anxiety from her house burned this week. I felt a friend’s new tradition to honor her deceased child with flowers in her Easter basket rather than sugar treats for an eternal 6 year old. I felt a friend’s exhaustion, anger, and fear as her transgender kids face the world. I felt a friend’s concern as her special ops son is on assignment in the world, in parts unknown. I feel a friend’s hopeful caution as she seeks to provide her gifts to the world with a new business.

While I sought the “normal” of Easter, it would not come. So, I sat with the somber.

The tears sat on the rims of my eyelashes, periodically one would fall from the weight of the world.

Then the & arrived.

For the first time, the congregation was invited up to go up and stand in the chancel with the choir and sing as we could Handel’s “Hallelujah chorus” (forward to 3:30 at the end with the glorious Westminster Presbyterian Church choir. Each section holding up a sign to help guide us forward to a place of belonging: alto, base, tenor, soprano.

& so, I accepted the invitation.

I walked forward and found a place. I stood on the edge. The fringe of the sopranos.

I fiercely followed the words, using my finger to keep pace on the sheet music.

& I let it all go.

Boldly loud. Fully felt.

Absorbed in community, feeling a new emotion through song.

& walked back to my pew, refreshed in a new way, more centered than somber.

Because the & is present, always.

I just have to exhale & find it.