Easter is Different This Year

Easter is different this year.

I know that is true for many. Either they are far away from loved ones, or missing loved ones who have passed. They may have a new baby or a new puppy or a new daughter or son-in-law. Families shrink and grow between Easters.

My first memories of Easter involved new dresses, and Easter egg hunts, and chocolate bunnies from the mysterious Big B Easter Bunny. And church. Always church. The tradition of new dresses continued into my teen years, and church turned into more of an all-day affair since my parents were fans of the “sunrise service,” which I assumed was for hippies, but since my parents were there and everyone looked like them, I learned it wasn’t. I never felt the majesty of a sunrise service, but I may have missed it with all my yawning. I wonder now how many beautiful sunrises I missed by being tired and cranky.

Somehow along the way—perhaps it was the sleepiness—I missed the point, and believed Easter was when Jesus died. This must have felt especially discouraging to my parents, who had taken me faithfully to every Maundy Thursday and Good Friday service leading up to Easter Sunday. Somehow, I missed the resurrection.

Then, I found Jesus. He had been there all along. He didn’t find me, like an old mitten in the lost and found. I found him, and my life changed. I’m not one for fanfare, but I swear there were trumpets when I sat outside at a dysfunctional youth camp with “Christian” horses and looked at the stars, and for the first time, I believed there had to be something bigger than me. I dared God to show me if he was real. He did.

My life changed. I can’t explain it, and I didn’t make it up. I didn’t pray the “sinner’s prayer,” or walk down an aisle, or get baptized. But a switch flipped. I came home, sat my parents down, and announced that Jesus didn’t die on Easter, he rose from the dead. I thought this was news to them. It wasn’t. They knew. They thought I knew. I can still see the look on my dad’s face: a mix of happiness mixed with his long-standing belief that he was getting it wrong if his kid didn’t know about Easter until she went to some dilapidated youth camp that she only went to because she also got a free bus ride to the bi-district boys’ basketball game, as I recall.

Easter changed. It became a celebration, and I left home shortly after for college and “spirit-filled” churches and Bible studies I tallied like jewels on my crown. I grew up singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” out of the Methodist hymnal, but now we sang praise songs with drums. Surely, God could hear us better. Surely, our worship was more authentic. Surely, I was getting it right.

I don’t remember them exactly, but there were many Easters when all my friends had children, and I could not. I wish I had a journal. Was I angry that God could raise Jesus from the dead, but couldn’t or wouldn’t plant an embryo in my womb? Would I even let myself question God? Or did I assume I didn’t have enough faith, or that my faith didn’t work like others did? It makes me sad to think I put God in a box, assuming if he loved me, he would give me a child, but I’m pretty sure I did. It is natural to put God in a box to understand Him better, or to shake him like a Magic 8 ball, or rub him like a genie in a bottle.

Then I was “blessed” with children—three boys in three years—and Easter changed again. An Easter dress for me, and three color-coordinated outfits for the boys. Sometimes we were home with our parents singing the same old Methodist hymns, and other times we were at our own hipster church singing the latest, greatest praise song. Either way, there was always church.

Then church stopped working for us. I will not try to explain why, and I don’t need you to save us. The pillars I had built my faith on were rickety at best, and they came tumbling down. Everything was up for grabs. I wasn’t sure if I believed any of it, or if I had been the victim of the biggest religious con game out there.

I stopped reading my Bible with its highlighted passages and notes. I stopped begging God to answer my prayers. I stopped talking to God at all.

I dared God to be real. To show up in a way that didn’t fit the box I had made for him.

But, oh how I missed the box of belonging, and the Magic 8 ball God that guided me, and the genie who would grant my wishes.

Slowly, gently, silently, God showed up. In my children, who don’t fit in the box at all, but are kind and good and look like the perfect mix of Greg and me. If there is a God who has an unlimited palette of creation, only a gracious one would paint eyes like mine and expressions like their dad’s, an ear with the same notch in the same place, dimpled chins. My boys are morning, noon, and night different, but they are undeniably ours. Genetics? Sure, if you need a science box to fit God in, but no Big Bang could make my heart stir like it does when I see my boys, or hear about their days, or watch them encourage those around them and add light to people’s lives. Could God feel the same way about me?

Easter was different. It was still family and ham and epic egg rolls that still make me smile when I think of them. I remember them as pure joy, but they probably had moments when someone annoyed me or the cooking seemed overwhelming or I didn’t like my dress. There was still church, but now we were “those” people who only come to church on Easter or Christmas. Those people I used to judge smugly.

Then we moved away from family, and the boys moved away from home, and my parents both died, and Greg’s dad died, and church became more and more uncomfortable, like a scratchy wool turtleneck on a warm day.

Greg and I will be alone this Easter. The boys are spread across the country and can’t come home. We will go to a church we picked off the internet, where we won’t know a soul, and where the songs may be unfamiliar. We will go out to brunch instead of having ham and homemade macaroni and cheese. I didn’t buy a new dress, and there won’t be an egg hunt or an egg roll. We won’t be giving each other chocolate bunnies.

I still believe in God. I still believe in Jesus. They just don’t fit in a box anymore, and oh, how I wish they did. I wish I could put the genie back in the bottle and hand it to my boys. But God doesn’t work that way. He never fit in the box. He never fit in the bottle. Beautiful traditions and familiar hymns cannot contain him.

This year, God is bigger than I imagined, and I know he is there. I just can’t put my finger on him. I can’t wrap him up and package him and make him fit my dreams and desires. And it is okay. It is good. A God who fits in a red, white, and blue box wouldn’t work in Africa or Asia or Antarctica, and to be worthy, he must work for everyone. He must love everyone equally, or not at all. He must be good all the time.

Easter is different this year, because I am different. God is the same, but I am still finding him. I hope you are too.