Tag: seasons

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Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

The banners above were made in praise to God by my mother. She truly spent all her days praising God. My mind is still trying to wrap itself around the fact that she has died.

As Easter begins tomorrow morning, my lips will be singing along with the choir,

I know that my Redeemer Lives!
What comfort this sweet sentence gives!
He lives, he lives, who once was dead;
He lives, my everliving head!

but yet my heart may be saying,

“My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1)

I’m reading Psalms tonight. David knows the anguish and despair I’m feeling. But yet he amazes me…the very next psalm, Psalm 23, is the most comforting psalm in the Bible.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 23:6)

How can this be? How can David be so distressed in one verse, and then so uplifted in the following verses?

Faith. He had a great faith…a faith that I seem to be lacking.

Some events in the past week have made me think about my mom. I’ve been looking back; remembering; caught up in the past.

This past week was also Holy Week, and so I’ve been preparing for Easter. I’ve been looking forward to celebrating Easter. I’ve been looking toward the Resurrection.

In this journey of grief, I mourn every day that takes me further away from my mother. Every day that passes takes me farther away from the time when my mother was alive.

But what if I look at this passage of time in a new way? Every day that passes is one day closer to when I will see my mother again. My human mind cannot comprehend this; Mom died; she is gone. But with faith, I know I will see her in heaven again.

And so I need to look forward. I need to look to the cross. I need to look forward to the day I will join my Savior in heaven.

Because I know that my Redeemer lives!

Easter blessings to you and your family,

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Whose Spring Break Is It, Anyway?

I woke up this morning, elated that Lily didn’t have to go to preschool today. I was able to have her at home for the entire day! (I don’t even want to THINK about full-day Kindergarten next year….)

We had a great day today, Emmy, Lily and I. Lily started the day thinking she was going to watch TV all day…after all, it was HER Spring Break. I wasn’t a ogre; I let her watch a little. After the day began rolling along, however, TV became a distant memory. Emmy and Lily spent a hour sharing their watercolors and painting away. (I thought I would die–they were getting along so nicely!) We read books together, we relaxed together, and we played games together.

Lily is creating her own game, right on the kitchen floor.

One game involved dozens of pink paper strips that we hid around the house for each other. The one who collected the most strips was the winner. (I have to say, I am a better hider of paper scraps than the girls. Their idea of a good hiding place is dropping the paper on the floor. Even so, I still lost. Hmm.)

I had to tell Ed when he came home that these little white scraps of paper weren’t just random scraps all over the floor. That’s Lily’s usual MO.

This time, Lily wrote down the alphabet, cut the letters out, and scattered them on the floor. (Her version of the alphabet had only 25 letters.) Then, she made the letters into words. She discovered the letter “o” was missing when she tried spelling “love.” “Love” is only one of two words she knows how to spell, the other being her name; therefore, this was a very short game since she wouldn’t allow me to help her spell any words.

The sun was shining, but we didn’t step a foot outside; Ed told me when he got home that it wasn’t that warm, anyway. I figured as much; the dog-walkers who passed by our house were wearing their winter coats.

Tomorrow, Lily’s room needs to be cleaned…my sister is coming to visit, and she will sleep in the spare bed which resides in my messy daughter’s room. Now that will be quite a project!

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