What to Do When You Find Yourself Sobbing in a Garden

an Easter story of sorts

Apr 18, 2025

“Excuse me, I’m trying to have a sacred moment here!” I wanted to yell as bus exhaust gurgled up right below the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem. It’s one of the sites where some of the events of Holy Week were presumed to take place, and I sat and stared at the hill of the old rugged cross, trying not to let the rumble of the buses pulling in and out ruin the vibe.

Most of the holy sites in Jerusalem feel similar, attempted “spiritual” experiences interrupted by hordes of humans human-ing. At least that’s how it normally is. This time, I shared the garden with the buses and a mere handful of humans. The city was quiet last summer, everyone waiting for Iran to retaliate in the next development in the heartbreaking war.

Great pick for a summer vaca, Jackie. Sounds relaxing! I blame my brother for getting me into this situation. I also blame him for an unbearably hot Iraqi Staycation a few Julys back and the time we almost got eaten by an orangutan named Richie in Malaysia, but those are stories for another time.

He and his wife do humanitarian work, so their adventures are of a different variety than my normal romps. In this edition, I was flying back with Ann and my nieces after their summer break, armed with pouches of gummy bears and Bluey figurines for the border crossing from Jordan. I had no idea what to expect from the time, but I expected it would be strange on some level. As we drove through the desert towards the Jordan River, we passed stands of pool floaties, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Jesus would pick the dinosaur or the unicorn for his baptism after-party.

On the other hand, maybe it would be a strange week because I’d brought myself along.

The week was calmer than I imagined, although strange too. I spent a lot of time painting fairies and dancing to pickle songs with my nieces, then getting briefed on possible global retaliation scenarios after they went to bed. It was a lot for my little heart to hold and a lot for my little nervous system to process. This wasn’t my reality. I am not used to living in a place touched by war, and part of me wanted to pack up their entire family and insist they get on the first flight out of there.

Then they had the nerve to introduce me to some beautiful people, and as I sat and heard the stories of the Palestinians they serve with, it hit me—they wanted to be there, in this fascinating, troubled place. This particular work is some of the most compelling of their lives, and as heartbreaking as it is, they wanted to stay.

And I had to let them.

On my last day, I took myself to the Garden Tomb, wandering past the markets by Damascus Gate, remembering the Red Dress Project1 I did a few years back. It never feels completely carefree to be in Jerusalem, but that day was one of the most carefree I’d had in the city, photographing one of their friends on the stone-lined streets.

This was not a carefree day. On the way to the garden, my tears began to flow. I’m no stranger to weeping, but I’d been trying to keep it together around my nieces. Now it tumbled out—tears for all the stories I was carrying, all the death. There was so much death. A school was bombed that morning in Gaza, and children were burning inside. The faces of the hostages still lined the streets, and threats of escalation from every side pressed into this not-so-holy land.

I cried tears of relief that I don’t have to live with war on my doorstep, tears of distress that so many people do. I cried remembering my niece dancing on the streets of the Old City in a My Little Pony dress, the cuteness about to crack my heart in half. At this point, I was a blubbering mess, unsure how I would find the end of the bottomless well of tears.

What do you do when you find yourself sobbing in a garden, especially when that garden is intertwined with an ancient story that is supposed to make your life make sense? Does it hold? Does the story of Jesus hold? Oh God, does it hold?

I slumped down on a bench by the buses, grateful no one was around. Amid the exhaust, I remembered throwing a book of blessings for the liturgical year2 into my backpack and fished it out. Skeptical it would feel cheesy or earnest, I flipped open to the Good Friday blessings, assuring myself that if I wasn’t into it, I could chuck the garden idea and search for an Aperol Spritz. “All right, Jan,” I muttered to the author, snot careening from my orifices. “You ready to bless this?”

Jan was not messing around:

“Let the ground gape in stunned lamentation.

Let it weep as it receives what it thinks it will not give up.”

Stunned lamentation.

Okay, I’m listening. I usually want to move past Good Friday and not dwell too long. The torture gets to me. But the image of the Earth weeping as the events played out on her surface felt oddly comforting, as if someone read the room correctly and knew precisely what was needed in a terrible moment. I’d thumbed through the brief history of the region earlier that day, noting how much blood lined the streets, every layer down. Of course the ground is crying too.

Sometimes, stunned lamentation is the only thing that makes sense.

After a bit, I wandered over to an olive grove in the middle of the garden. Other than a group of Korean students singing in the corner and three women praying in Spanish, it was silent. I turned to the blessings for Holy Saturday. There were more than expected, and if I’m honest, I’m not a Holy Saturday kind of girl either. As my niece liked to say, “Borrrring!” What kind of a plot point is this? Skip! Let’s get to that razzle-dazzle ending.

But I was not ready for the razzle. Perhaps it was time to give Saturday a chance.

I turned the pages slowly. The words felt like a relief, lines about waiting and emptiness and expecting no more of ourselves than to keep breathing.

As I read, my intuition pulled me deeper into the belly of the beast. One by one, I began naming the sadnesses of my life. All the things I’m waiting for, all the relationships I’m grieving, all the frustrations and questions rose to the surface and poured out, dripping onto the hot dirt, swirling with the scent of sun-roasted olive leaves.

How often have I let myself weep in public without being self-conscious? How often have I been ashamed of my tears, how quick and forceful the river comes, and how much they’ve felt like a liability, proof of being the lone “emotional” woman in a roomful of men?

God, it felt good to let it out. It felt honest, like I got to be me for once, unabashed. And then, at some point, I reached the bottom of the well. It was out, I was done, and I could not deny that something had met me in the sadness.

I turned the page again.

“…we will not try to fathom what comes to meet us in the stillness but simply open to the approach of a mystery we hardly dared to dream.”

I have no idea how long I stayed in Saturday. I remember being wrung out and wrecked, still not ready for the razzle. Maybe I didn’t need to force it. Maybe this was about sitting in the broken in-between with no clear answers.

Yet, leaving without visiting the main attraction felt like a missed opportunity. Since I cannot resist a travel hack and gerryrigging my way around the crowds, I took my swollen eyes to Sunday and walked to the tomb, no lines of tourists in sight, and no idea how we would wrap this up.

My head felt fuzzy in the heat, exhaustion setting in, my body attempting to absorb what I’d put it through. Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest idea to go through one’s litany of sadnesses in a single session. I sighed. “All right, people, what are we doing? Jesus, you got anything for me?”

I half-heartedly skimmed the story in John 20, satisfied with the immersiveness of this experience that made the scene easier to imagine. As I read the story, the words “Woman, why are you crying?” jumped off the page. A crying woman—here was a character I could understand. Turns out I was not the only woman sobbing in a garden. This one had an even stranger week than me. This one was dealing with the murder and the missing body of one of her closest friends. This one was chatting with other-worldly beings about her tears, right before her friend said, “Surprise! I’m undead!”

Strange days indeed.

Stranger still, I’d just sighed for help to the same undead guy.

I read it again. “Woman, why are you crying?” It’s easy to hear in a harsh or demeaning tone because it’s not usually a compliment to call someone “woman” and ask about her tears. But this guy was not afraid of his emotions. This guy never saw tears as a sign of toxic empathy. This guy could weep with the best of them.

Instead of disdain, I heard the mic-drop, the shock and hilarity of the greatest party trick of all time. “Ta-da!” Jazz hands and a little jingle, perhaps. “Not dead, not dead, Hey! Ho! I’m not dead!” I imagined myself shrieking, “What is happening? You expect me not to cry in these circumstances?” as I grabbed his face and squeezed him harder than pleasant for a freshly-resurrected body.

I shook my head. All of a sudden, a hearty guffaw burst out of me. “This is an outrageous story! Outrageous, I tell you. How can you be undead? How can I be talking to you?” I felt him laughing at me in the best possible way. The laughter poured over me, out of me, mixing with the tears. “What is happening?” If I’d been a little more coherent, I’d be tempted to question if I’d worked myself into a heat-induced psychosis, laughing alone into a tomb. But the moment was too good to be questioned, so I just sat and laughed.

Sometimes the crying women get to see God first.

I sat there a long time, unsure how to leave, worried I would forget it all, but Jan came through one last time. Her parting words, my final blessing:

“All you need to remember is how it sounded when you stood in the place of death and heard the living calling your name.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

Adventures in Being Human by Jackie Knapp

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