Is there any peace in Holy Week?

It’s Holy Week.

Growing up as a staff kid at an evangelical megachurch, this week (which we never called Holy Week) marked prepping for the marathon of services my mom (children's director) was about to lead, and we would champion her for all six of the services within 24 hours. We were happy to. And honestly, if there is one thing my evangelical megachurch did well, it was have fun. Easter was a joyful celebration. It was a happy time.

When I got to my teen years, between the six services, I began sneaking in a beach sunrise service on Sunday morning that my boyfriend (now husband) Jesse’s dad put together (yes, I married a pastor’s kid). We woke up too early, coffee and donuts in hand, by the beach, singing songs next to the Huntington Beach pier as we watched surfers in the background.

For the first 20 years of my life, between the buzz of back-to-back services and the sleepy surf town wake-up energy, Easter was so deeply nostalgic, fulfilling, and uplifting.

Ironically, once I began detangling my faith and looking at the church structures I was a part of more critically…the nostalgia of Easter wore thin. For years, I didn’t know what to make of Easter.

In my first year of seminary, I remember driving home from an Easter service in Cambridge, Massachusetts and getting in an argument with my husband. I asked what he thought, and he said, “I don’t really buy any of this Jesus stuff.” And I panicked. Because I had just uprooted our lives to move across the country to study Jesus, to become a pastor. “What are we going to do?” I remember thinking.

Ha. Getting Easter right, getting Jesus right, was so high stakes even after I had deconstructed. 

The dust settled. I learned how to manage my own anxiety around belief and difference.

And over time, through progressive church spaces and friends in more liturgical traditions, I began to understand this week differently.

I learned people call it Holy Week. I learned it’s not just about resurrection. It’s about the movement from Palm Sunday to crucifixion—betrayal, fear, violence, grief. 

Holy Week is not as fun and glamorous, not filled with the cheery razzle dazzle I was formed by.

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At Harbor, our community holds a deep ability to tenderly feel the heartbreak others experience. This is a community full of empathy, compassion, and inclined toward the work of justice.

We know deep in our bones the aches of this Holy Week.

Even now, in this spring of 2026, there is so much within our community folks are fielding—from family death, to scary medical news, to trauma reignited. This is a tender time at Harbor.

I keep asking myself this question: Is there any peace to be found in this Holy Week?

I remember that oh-so-sweet teenager peace of bopping from a beachside morning with my boyfriend worshipping to the buzz of spreading the “Good News” at my megachurch. Ignorance was bliss and “peace”—“the joy of the Lord”—washed over me. Nothing else mattered. People excluded from the church didn’t matter. Harm and trauma didn’t matter. War didn’t matter. I was trained to ignore it all and just be lost in the indescribable peace of Jesus.

Now here we are.
It’s 2026.

We are hurting.
In our personal lives, in the countries we live in, globally.
Our hearts feel split open. The ground feels like it’s shifting. And if I’m honest, there are moments I miss that kind of easy peace.

So where can peace be found for us in this Holy Week?

Maybe not in escaping the pain or pretending everything is okay. 

My kids keep asking me to tell them the Easter story. Beckham on the way to school concluded “I like the Christmas story way more. Easter is sad.” 

You know what—Easter is sad. Because even as we proclaim “Jesus is alive,” we are still left with the wounds of the crucifixion. Jesus’ body still holds the scars.

After the resurrection, Jesus comes to the disciples and says, “Peace be with you”…and then shows them his hands and his side (John 20:19-20).

He doesn’t hide the wounds. Peace shows up alongside them.

Maybe peace, for us, is not about escaping the pain or pretending everything is okay.

Maybe it looks like befriending the open wounds and scars. Staying present to one another. Trusting that we are not alone in it. Choosing to still see the flickers of goodness and hope that remain with us. 

And maybe—however slowly, however quietly—we can still believe that death, suffering, and injustice will not have the final word. That—even with these wounds—peace is with us.