Some women were there, watching from a distance, including Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James the younger and of Joseph), and Salome. They had been followers of Jesus and had cared for Him while He was in Galilee… Mark 15:40–41

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a story you cannot fathom belongs to you? A betrayal, the ending of a career that once felt like a calling, the death of a marriage, the loss of a loved one—a moment that splits your life into before and after.

I think about the women—and John—at the foot of the cross. Everyone else ran or hid, but they stayed, watching the greatest tragedy the world has ever known unfold before their eyes. Surely, this wasn’t the story they thought they would be living after three years of following Jesus and believing He was the Messiah.

To stay at the foot of the cross, they must have carried both deep love and fragile hope—hope that this wasn’t the end, that somehow, some way, there was more beyond what they were seeing. But in that moment, how could they feel anything but shock and loss?

Yet they stayed at the foot of the cross.

So often during Resurrection Week, we rush past Friday and Saturday, clinging to the comfort that Sunday is coming. But in real life, resurrection rarely comes in three days.

Sometimes, we live in Friday.
Sometimes, we sit in Saturday. For months, years, or even decades.

We live in the tension of loss without the immediate relief of redemption.

So the question becomes: is it possible to keep our eyes fixed on our Savior in the middle of it? Is it possible to hold two truths at once—I don’t understand why, and I know God is faithful?

Because in reality, we only have two choices: hold both truths side by side, or walk away—closing off our hearts and losing intimacy with the only One who is committed to restoring them.

The beauty of the women at the foot of the cross isn’t just that they stayed. It’s that they kept coming back to Jesus.

The Gospel of Mark tells us that on Saturday evening, they went out and bought burial spices to anoint His body. They didn’t avoid their grief. They didn’t numb it or self-medicate it. They stepped fully into the process of loss.

And then Sunday morning, they did the next thing: They showed up. They came to the tomb, prepared to anoint His body, wondering who would roll away the stone.

Because they were willing to stay in the tension—because they kept showing up—it was they who witnessed the resurrection miracle. Not the ones who denied Him.
Not the ones who hid. The ones who stayed.
The ones who returned.

They were the first to see with their own eyes and hear with their own ears: this was not the end of the story.

They carried both realities—the greatest tragedy the world had ever known and the greatest hope the world would ever see.

Because they stayed. Because they didn’t give up. Because they refused to believe that their God was incapable—no matter how evil the evidence looked.

If you are living in a Friday or Saturday that doesn’t feel neat or temporary—don’t give up. Don’t stop bringing your honest prayers before God. Don’t stop lamenting. Don’t stop hoping. Don’t stop clinging to truth when your feelings tell a different story. Don’t stop preaching to your own heart. Don’t stop inviting others in to pray and to carry this with you.

Don’t give up.

God does not write stories that end in tragedy. Resurrection is always part of His story—no matter how long your Saturday lasts.

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