“Staying in the Middle of What You Don’t Yet Understand”

A Good Friday Reflection

There is a moment in the final hours before the cross that I find myself returning to more often now than I used to. Jesus is sitting with His disciples, sharing a meal, and in the middle of that gathering, He says something that shifts the entire room: “One of you will betray me.”

What strikes me is not just what He says—but what happens next. No one points a finger. No one names a suspect. Instead, each one begins to ask, “Is it me?” That response has stayed with me, because it tells us something we might otherwise miss.

The one who would betray Him was not obvious. He was still sitting among them, still trusted, still part of the circle. Even when Jesus made it known more quietly, there was no rush to intervene, no attempt to stop what was coming. And Jesus Himself did not stop it.

He didn’t expose Judas to the room. He didn’t force a different outcome. He simply allowed the moment to come into the open. There is something almost difficult to take in about that. Because it means the betrayal did not happen outside of His awareness… or beyond His reach. It unfolded in His presence.

And somehow, within that, there is both recognition… and release. Not approval. Not indifference. But a willingness to let what had already taken root in Judas come fully into the light.

I’ve often wondered what Judas himself understood in that moment. Whether he believed he was forcing something to happen… or whether he realized too late that Jesus was not going to resist. Even the betrayal did not move beyond Him… it moved within what He allowed.

I used to read that moment and move quickly past it, already knowing how the story unfolds. But the older I’ve gotten, the more I find myself slowing down and sitting inside that room. Because the truth is, the disciples didn’t understand what was happening. Not really. They felt the shift. They sensed something was wrong. But they could not yet see where it was leading, or how deeply it would affect them.

And still… they stayed.

I think I understand that kind of staying more now than I once did.

There have been years in my life—walking alongside my husband through his health struggles—when I could not make sense of what was unfolding in front of me. There were moments I wanted clarity, moments I wanted answers, and more than a few when I simply wanted it all to stop.

But instead of resolution, what I often found was something much quieter. I found myself remaining. Not because I had figured anything out, but because leaving the moment wasn’t really an option. So I stayed in it—sometimes one hour at a time, sometimes one conversation at a time—learning slowly that not every season comes with immediate understanding.

Looking back, I realize I was learning something I didn’t yet have language for. At first, I thought it was just about getting through it—holding on tightly, pushing forward, trying to stay strong and keep everything together. But over time, something in that began to change.

What I would later come to recognize as endurance… didn’t look the way I expected. It became quieter. Less about force, and more about presence. It became the ability to stay without needing to solve everything, to move forward without having to explain every step along the way.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized this wasn’t a new idea at all. Others had seen it too. The early church spoke about this in ways that feel surprisingly close to what we experience.

John Chrysostom described a kind of inner freedom that could not be taken away by outward circumstances. And Macarius the Great went even further inward, writing about the heart as a place where many things exist at once—conflict and peace, fear and trust, what he called “dragons” and “angels.”

That language may sound poetic, but it rings true. Because if we are honest, we know what it is to feel more than one thing at the same time. We know what it is for fear to rise, for frustration to surface, for the desire to control a situation to take hold—even while another part of us is reaching for peace.

What I have come to see is that these movements within us, as real as they are, are not the final authority. There is something greater. Presence Himself.

Over time, I have learned to pause when something rises in me, to notice it without immediately reacting, and to ask quietly where it is coming from. Not to judge it or push it away, but simply to recognize it. Because what we respond from matters. It shapes not only what we say, but who we are becoming.

Good Friday is often seen through the lens of betrayal, and rightly so. But there is another layer to it that feels just as important. It is the story of people who did not understand what was unfolding… and stayed anyway.

It is the story of a Savior who was not overtaken by events, but who walked into them willingly. And it is the story of every one of us who finds ourselves in moments we would never have chosen, learning slowly that faith is not always found in understanding.

Sometimes, it is found in remaining. Not everything will make sense when it is happening. Not everything will be stopped when we think it should be. But even there, we are not outside of Him.

And over time, we begin to see that what felt like endurance was also something else…

We were being held.

And maybe that is what allows us to stay…and to endure—even in the middle of what we don’t yet understand.