Happy Good Friday

Happy Good Friday? Might seem like an odd greeting. But yes, Good Friday makes me Happy. Jesus didn’t stay on the cross.

I got my first tattoo on Good Friday 2005. On Good Friday 2004, my first husband disappeared. We had been dealing with foreclosure, DUIs and OUILs, and he just didn’t come home from work that day. My life as I knew it came crashing down. When he was found three weeks later, he decided that he wanted to trade his newfound life of substances and women for the one we had had.

One year later, Good Friday came around and reminded me of how much my life had changed for the better. Money that I earned actually stayed in my account. No wondering if my husband would come home at 12, 2, or not at all, wondering if I would get a call from the police. I had met Troy a few months earlier and knew we were soulmates. God had exchanged a bad life for good. What more appropriate time for me to have that realization than on Good Friday?

^17-25“Pay close attention now:
I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.
All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain
are things of the past, to be forgotten.
Look ahead with joy.
Anticipate what I’m creating:
I’ll create Jerusalem as sheer joy,
create my people as pure delight.
I’ll take joy in Jerusalem,
take delight in my people:
No more sounds of weeping in the city,
no cries of anguish;
No more babies dying in the cradle,
or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime;
One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal—
anything less will seem like a cheat.
They’ll build houses
and move in.
They’ll plant fields
and eat what they grow.
No more building a house
that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields
that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
They won’t work and have nothing come of it,
they won’t have children snatched out from under them.
For they themselves are plantings blessed by God,
with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.
Before they call out, I’ll answer.
Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard.
Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,
lion and ox eat straw from the same trough,
but snakes—they’ll get a diet of dirt!
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
anywhere on my Holy Mountain,” says God.

Isaiah 65:16-18, The Message