Easter Expectation

I, along with christians all over the world I am sure, absolutely love Easter.  I love everything about Easter.  The somberness of Good Friday always gets me started.  Thinking about Jesus and what He endured for me.   For imperfect me, I choke up at some point thinking about the whips dragging along his back knowing that it was my sin that put the whips there. But we also know how it ends and I love waking up to Easter morning knowing that the tomb did not keep Jesus in.   Usually it seems to be a bright spring morning with birds chirping and sun shining.  I can imagine Jesus stepping out of the tomb that morning and into a morning filled with promise and hope.  Our Easter Sundays are also filled with promise and hope and love.   Egg hunts and baskets, happy walks to church, singing songs while we look nice, taking pictures and all smiling at the camera.  Love it.

And that so DID NOT happen today.  Today we awoke to all the birds chirping and sun shining and then everything else seemed to just go wrong.  We were a little road weary from traveling the past two days, and having more sweets in our diet.  Craig had lots of things to do at church this morning:  helping set up for our youth breakfast, usher, get communion ready, etc.  I got ready quickly but had to stop my hair dryer often to break up fights, I came downstairs to kids running around, pillows and toys every where, dirty carpet, dirty dishes, hair wasn't combed, teeth weren't brushed, shoes not on, cereal in the carpet, etc, etc, etc.

Perfect time to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful and show my kids self-control and I completely lost it.  Lost. it.

Time to go to church.  And on we walked to church.  My most favorite activity.  Except today.  Today when my husband was not with us, no pretty pictures were taken, I hadn't eaten breakfast, kids were still picking at each other....you know the drill.  Come into church, smile a tight smile.  Sit down. Motions, motions, motions....

And have the most amazing service.  Or maybe it was that my heart was soft and ready to hear something, anything after my not so super morning with the kids.

Upbeat songs, communion, message that was tailored for me.  Putting on my full armor of God.

And I realize that it was the most perfect Easter morning for me to have.  For me to completely understand how much I need a Savior I often have to be reminded of how I mess it up when I am not putting on my full armor each day.   And a great reminder that smiling pictures on the yard in our nice clothes is not what Easter is about.  That Easter, for me, is a battle against myself to do things my way instead of leaning on God when things are messy and doing it HIS way.  I sat my children down after church and I said these words to them "Kids, we are sinners and we mess things up"  They looked at me strange, because I don't know if I say those words point blank to them like that very often.  I started to talk about the ways I had messed up.  Isaac chimed in "And you really yelled, but I was pushing Caleb a lot"  Caleb said, "I made a big mess".  Oh bless their hearts.   Perfect into to : "Jesus did not mess it up....he did not and that is why we are even celebrating this morning.  On our own we will do things like we did this morning.....we will fight and yell and feel sorry for ourselves.  We really do need a savior, it is NOT just a story."

And with that the kids and I said our "I'm sorry's"  and they picked up books and I went back to making lunch.  I do not have a single pretty picture from our Easter this year but I have this one.  Dresses have been replaced with play clothes, nice sweaters off, hair messy, picture unfocused.  It is delightfully an unperfect traditional Easter picture and the perfect picture for us this year.   It is when our hearts were actually in the right place to celebrate Easter.

And it reminds me that while I love those pretty, smiling, pictures of us at Easter....getting ready for church, that there is something really genuine about how we spent Easter this year.  We were reminded of our great need for a savior and we are so grateful that Jesus did not allow us to mess it all up on our own.