Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!  We had a low-key day here.  Muffins were baked for breakfast.  There was a  frenzied rush to church frought with drama and a small mama-meltdown, but it was so good to be there when I finally settled into a pew.  We haven’t been here for Easter for many years, because we often travel back home to North Dakota.  It was nice not to travel and spend some time together as a family, but I found the day more difficult than I anticipated because I missed both sides of our family more than I thought I would, and I also missed some of the previous congregations that we have spent Easter with when we lived in different places for medical school and residency and before that as well.  And I was missing the organ and Easter hymns of my childhood.  I’m happy that contemporary worship music makes many people happy, but it is like a second language to me, and not one that I am fluent in.

After church there were pancakes, some quick board books read at home while big kids played outside and fell in the mud, and then a long and luxurious afternoon rest time that I spent locked in my room with the toddler so no one could come and wake us up.  Glorious!  There was an absolutely hilarious Easter egg hunt that I will tell you more about tomorrow, and a fun family walk around the neighborhood, followed by yummy steak (thanks mom and dad!) and a choir rehearsal for me while the rest of the family cleaned up the colossal mess of the day.

This Easter I’m grateful that there was no choking baby that had to be rushed to  emergency surgery to extract a small plastic butterfly followed by the most laborious middle of the night trip back to Duluth from North Dakota I’ve ever experienced.

And I’m grateful that what was dead

is made ALIVE again in every possible symbolic way.

Never before  in my life have I experienced so many sprouting plants at Easter.  Although I know this is the norm for much of the country, it has been  a treat here in the north.