This week was terrible. This past six months have been difficult, but this week before Easter felt like the climax of all that, and not in a good way.

Part of the reason it was bad is because it was bad, and part of it is because instead of letting all the feelings and experiences flow through, I let them take residence in my body.

I would have a roller coaster of a day, and at the end, I’d realize how much of that was me riding drama that wasn’t mine. In some moments, I would be aware enough to feel my feelings and take care of myself, and I would do what I needed to do (like walking 15.7 miles in three days; forgive me for being oddly specific). Overall, though, that reactionary emotionality seemed to outweigh healthy coping.

When things are not great, it’s easy to revert to the lowest functioning version of yourself, or an older model of you, the one who uses unhealthy coping mechanisms. The one who can see the big picture with Now You Eyes, but still acts like this current way of being has no end and the only way to live is to ride the waves until you get dumped on the shore.

That leaves me at today, the climax of the Christian religious calendar, feeling like it’s still Lent.

I took myself for a walk at a local nature trail yesterday after a rough afternoon. It was rough was not really because of what happened, but because I allowed myself to get sucked back into an old rut that didn’t serve me well. It happened not once but multiple times, and I was beating myself up for it.

I was walking, determined to leave the negativity on the trail, and simultaneously repeating to myself my “rules for engagement” that would help prevent me from reacting to future situations instead of responding to them (life goals).

Instead of feeling better, which is the usual effect of being outside, I felt as bad at the end of the walk as I did at the beginning. The stress headache I’d meant to medicate before leaving for the walk still had its claws embedded in my skull. I climbed into the car.

If you listen to NPR, you know on weekend on evenings they play…. terrible music. I understand this is a matter of taste, but for the our purposes, let’s agree there’s objectively terrible music, every weekend. It took only a few seconds of NPR in the car before I changed to a local college station I used to listen to but had kind of forgotten about.

Old school reggae filled the car. Conscious lyrics poured into the bleak and tender spaces of my head. By the time I got home, the music and the DJ had done more for my soul than the walk had.

The thing the DJ said that stuck with me was this: “It’s Easter. It’s time to rise up!”

I’d always thought of Easter and the resurrection of being specific to one guy. The DJ’s exhortation reminded me that birth, death, and resurrection are the reality for every living thing on earth. In the tradition of One Love and the Universal Christ, if Christ has risen, then so have we.