Episode 069: Holy Week for Busy Women: How to Be Present When Life Does Not Pause

Being present for Holy Week starts before Palm Sunday. It starts with your calendar.

For many busy women, Holy Week arrives right in the middle of everything else - and by Easter morning, you realize you spent more time on logistics than absorbing what happened between the triumphal entry and the empty tomb. This episode changes that with one simple preparation strategy backed by research.

In this episode, you will discover:

• An overlooked detail from Matthew 21 about how Jesus approached Holy Week that gives you permission to prepare too
• Why research shows that intentional preparation actually changes how your brain experiences meaningful events — you arrive more present, less anxious, more engaged
• How to find, block, and protect sacred space on your calendar even when your schedule does not slow down

SCRIPTURE HIGHLIGHT: Matthew 21:1-3

Research note: Hobson et al. (2018), Personality and Social Psychology Review - intentional preparation for meaningful events reduces anxiety and increases personal agency.

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Transcript

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Being present for Holy Week starts before Palm Sunday. It starts with your calendar. We are going to use one simple preparation strategy, backed by research from the University of Toronto, that helps you actually experience the most sacred week of the year, even when your schedule does not slow down. Here is what changed this for me. Most of us experience Holy Week as something that happens around us. The services show up on the church calendar. We attend them when we are able. And by Easter morning, we realize we spent more time coordinating brunch logistics than absorbing what happened between the triumphal entry and the empty tomb. Today we are going to change that with one move. I am Coach Janet J. This is your next best step. And we are going to look at a moment from Matthew 21 that most of us skip right past, and it changes everything about how we approach this week. The scripture I want to anchor us to is from Matthew 21, verses 1 through 3. And I chose this passage for a reason that might surprise you. We usually focus on the crowd waving palms and shouting, Hosanna! The grand moment, the drama. I want to back up to what happened before the procession. Jesus was approaching Jerusalem, and before he entered the city, he paused. He gave specific instructions to two of his disciples. Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. Jesus prepared for his entry. He was intentional about how he would approach this sacred week. He did not just let it happen to him. He made arrangements. He gave instructions. He created space for the moment to carry its full weight. If the Son of God prepared for Holy Week, perhaps that is permission for us to prepare too. Here is the real tension for busy women during Holy Week. The calendar does not clear itself. The carpool still runs, the work deadlines do not shift, the laundry still multiplies, and the research speaks to why the preparation matters so much here. A 2018 review published in Personality and Social Psychology Review, led by Hobson and colleagues at the University of Toronto, examined decades of studies on rituals and found that intentional preparation for meaningful events reduces anxiety and increases a sense of personal agency. The act of preparing itself is a form of engagement. It signals to your brain this matters. Pay attention. The preparation is part of the experience. When you set aside even a small window to ready your heart, your nervous system registers the significance before the event begins. You arrive differently. And there is a second layer to this. Research on what psychologists call anticipatory reflection shows that briefly imagining yourself in a future meaningful moment activates the same brain regions involved in emotional reward. You begin to benefit from the experience before it even starts. So, preparation for Holy Week is the on-ramp to actually being present for it. Alright, here's the one practical piece, the one move I mentioned earlier. And it is simpler than you might expect. Pull out your calendar right now, or as soon as this episode ends, and look at the week of March 29th through April 5th. Palm Sunday through Easter. Where is there an open pocket? Even 15 minutes. It does not have to be a full evening. It could be a lunch break, a car ride alone, or in the 15 minutes between dropping someone off and picking someone up. Block that pocket. Label it something that matters to you. Holy week quiet. Or sacred pause. Or even just mine. Whatever language keeps it protected. Here's the important part. You do not need to know what you will do in that pocket yet. Your only job today is to find it and protect it. That is the preparation. That is following Jesus' example from Matthew 21, making arrangements before the moment arrives. On Monday's episode, I am going to give you a simple, flexible approach for what to do inside those pockets. Something that adapts to your actual schedule, whether you have one minute or 10. So if you are already thinking, okay, I blocked the time, now what? Monday has you covered. For today, your work is making the space. Because here's what I have learned. We do not drift into sacred moments. We clear room for them. And clearing the room is itself an act of worship. And here's what I want you to hear. Holy Week does not require perfection. It does not require attendance at every service, a daily devotional marathon, or emotional intensity on demand. It asks for presence, and presence starts with preparation. Jesus prepared. And throughout that entire week, from the temple to the upper room to Gethsemane, he was fully present in each moment because he had entered into it with intention. If you listened to our Lent preparation episode back in February, that was episode 52, you will remember that we talked about Lent as an invitation. Holy Week carries that same spirit. This is an invitation to walk alongside Jesus through the most significant week in human history. Even if your walk happens to be in a parking lot between errands, that counts. That matters. God meets you there. Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with three quick questions to sharpen your preparation. These work best if you have your calendar nearby for March 29th through April 5th. Question one: Is there anything on next week's schedule that could be moved, delegated, or released entirely? Look at each day. Sometimes there's a meeting that could become an email, an errand that could wait, or a commitment you said yes to three weeks ago that no longer makes sense. Question two, is there something you agreed to out of obligation that you still have time to graciously step back from? If you said yes because you felt pressure and not purpose, you still have a window to have that conversation. Question three, and this one makes all the difference. Where is the one pocket of time you are most likely to protect? And who do you need to communicate that to? Because if you don't tell your spouse, your kids, your coworker, or whoever shares your calendar, that 15 minutes will disappear. Name the pocket, name the person, and have a 30-second conversation. I'm keeping this window open during Holy Week. It matters to me. If something shifted while you were answering those, good. That means you just made room for something sacred. Let's pull this together. Holy week arrives whether we are ready or not. The research tells us that intentional preparation changes how your brain experiences meaningful events. You arrive more present, less anxious, more engaged. Jesus modeled this in Matthew 21. He prepared before he entered. We follow his lead by opening our calendars and protecting one pocket of sacred space. Your next best step: find one pocket of time during Holy Week. Even 15 minutes. Block it, label it, tell someone it matters to you. That is your preparation. That is your act of worship. Come back Monday. I'm going to give you a flexible, no pressure approach for what to fill that space with. Something that meets you exactly where you are. You made the space. Monday we fill it. And if this episode gave you permission to protect your time this week, share it with one person who could use the same nudge. That is how other women find this podcast. One share at a time. I will see you on Monday.