If I’m being honest, I really wasn’t looking forward to Easter this year. Which, that in and of itself is a sign of the times, because Easter is usually my JAM! But as I tried to psyche myself up with every day that lead up to today, I just couldn’t fake the funk.
Easter at the Rodriguez Home usually looks like a beautiful service spent at church magnifying the name of Jesus, and sitting under the weight of what His death means for our lives. It’s then followed by us scurrying home to put the final touches on our backyard as we wait for our families and friends to descend upon our house with their yummiest dishes and beautiful smiles in tow. Gabe usually has his smoker going with something succulent teasing our noses with its sweet aroma, while the kids chase each other around the backyard as they wait for their friends and cousins to arrive.
There’s the annual Easter egg hunt where the adults have almost as much fun hiding the eggs as the kids do finding them. There’s Easter crafts for the kids, too many desserts to consume in one sitting, and so much joy in the air that as the sun starts going down, you feel like you can wrap it around you to keep you warm from the cold air that starts settling in. Easter really is one of our favorite days of the year…
Which is why I was dreading this Easter. Because I knew we wouldn’t be gathering with our church family under one roof. I knew that our backyard would be quiet instead of filled with the joyful sounds that it usually possesses on this day. We wouldn’t be taking our annual Easter picture dressed in our Easter best in front of one of the beautiful backdrops that our church usually provides. Our traditions would be disrupted this year. And Disruption was not welcomed here.
I went through the motions of filling the plastic eggs for the kiddos last night after they went to bed, and compiled their Easter baskets with preverbal fingers crossed that they would actually be as happy with them in the morning as they used to be with Grammie’s. But my heart just wasn’t in it. The anticipation for this day actually made me want to skip over it all together.
After everything was finished, I dragged my tired body to my room, turned off the lights, and collapsed in to my bed; my head finally on my pillow, but my mind so far from rest.
And then it happened.
Out of seemingly nowhere, I became overwhelmed with emotion as the magnitude of what we were actually celebrating on this day arrested my thoughts and held every other distraction at bay. A vivid picture of the Savior dragging His broken body through the uneven streets, all the way to Calvary, caused my heart to gasp. His death was magnanimous. But His resurrection? Absolutely critical.
And here I was. Worried about Easter baskets and disappointed about all of the faces I wouldn’t get to see today. All the while loosing sight of what previous years’ preparations were really about and who the source of our joy actually is.
I felt dumb. And actually a little embarrassed for my feelings of not-so-long-ago. But then it dawned on me that there was room for both revelations to be true. There was space for me to mourn our normal traditions for this day and hold in reverence and be completely grateful for Jesus’ resurrection in my life. In fact, I dare say that Jesus understood my disappointment and sat in it with me as I processed it all. Because that’s the kind of Father that He is.
Out of that came a decision to lose the expectations I had for this day. I reconciled the fact that today would look different from any other Easter, but you know what else I did? I embraced it. I embraced the reality that this year’s Easter picture would not be in front of a pretty back drop, BUT it would still have the people I love the very most in it. While there wouldn’t be 15+ kids running around our backyard in search of yummy-filled eggs, there would still be 2 pretty enthusiastic little loves searching for all of the eggs they could find.
Today didn’t look like what I hoped it would, but we were together, we had fun, and today created new memories that we will look back on with fondness just like we have every other Easter Sunday.
… And we were still able to get a pretty great Easter Family Photo if I do say so myself. 😊
MAMMA ARIANNA 