Easter 2014

Three days after Easter and I'm still detoxing; what about you?

Sugar. 

Sugar. 

Sugar. 

Oof. 

I'm going to just go ahead and put Psalm 34:8 on this one: "Taste and see the LORD is good." We certainly tasted. We certainly saw. 

My parents along with my brother Wes and sister-in-law Kaitlin came to visit for Easter weekend and we had a perfect weekend together. 

While the the sugary treats were indeed delicious (along with the ham!), we received most gratefully a bite of summer sun to warm our bare arms and faces. 

With the hope of flying a kite (Arie's winter-long request), we traveled to both a park and then a beach in search of a breeze. 

It never came. Arie, however, ran with unrestrained glee, dragging a landed kite through the grass behind him. 

Love that boy! 

The beach was fantastic. Shrinking mounds of ice and snow guarded the shore and the biting waters behind them. The air was so warm we could have imagined it was July with our eyes closed, yet as we approached those frozen barriers the air cooled so quickly it was as if we had opened the door to a refrigerator! 

While this weekend was a summer-like exception, I have to be honest and tell you that I don't really like spring.  Yes I'm glad it's not winter, but it feel almost like the cruelest of seasons: tantalizing us with the hope of summer and then sending us reeling back with those cursed cold fronts. Plus spring is wet and muddy and often smells like mold and earth worms. 

This year Easter felt like spring to me. It felt like hope. It also felt like unmet longing. In my faith tradition we talk about something called the "already but not yet." At Easter we celebrate what God has already done for us in Christ: forgiven us, restored us, redeemed us. Yet the full healing power of his sacrifice has not yet been realized. Wars have not yet ended. The hungry have not yet been filled. Disease has not yet been cured. I wait to see if my empty womb will ever be filled with child. We're in spring. We wait in eager expectation for the summer of our faith, when Jesus returns again to do away with all this brokenness and make all things new. 

As I celebrated Easter in the middle of our last post-IUI two week wait, I oscillated between the immense joy of the resurrection and the longing we all feel for our broken world to be restored. It gives my great comfort to know that even if my womb is never full in spring, the pain I feel will disappear in that eternal summer. I cannot forget: winter is receding. I fix my mind on this image from John's vision in the book of Revelation: 

 Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
    to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
    and honor and glory and praise!”

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
    be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

I long for that day when my empty womb will be made more than insignificant as my whole being is flooded full with the worthiness of of the Lamb. I ache to see every knee bow down to my Savior! I am desperate to fall down with unrestrained worship. 

It's something of a paradox, isn't it? The way I feel simultaneous full and hollow imagining that day. Already but not yet. Winter behind us, summer before us, we're living day by day as faithfully as we can in our temporary spring. 

xo