Happy Easter all! This was a weird Easter, right? It wasn't just me? It was so...unsettling? unfinished? uneasy? I don't know what the right word is, but family is such a giant part of how we celebrate holidays that it was just eerie without it. There was these huge gaps of time that just lay gaping there - the time we would have spent getting ready and going to church, the time I would've been rushing around getting dinner for 30 set up and served, the time where normally the kids would all run off and adults would break into groups to talk and pull out decks of cards. These big pockets of time that just hung there today like silent reminders of all we can't do.
On a scale of 1-10, how bad of a Christian am I, that on the day that is arguably the most joyous of the year, the day Jesus rose from the dead, I had to grapple with finding my joy? But I did, and there was lots of it. I just had to dig deep for it and not throw in the towel or spend too much time grieving my tribe.
Joy in waking up this morning with Baby Girl bouncing on my bed, yelling, "Let's go find some eggs!" and Baby Boy grumbling from where he was curled up at the bottom of my bed, "Go back to sleep, it's too early, we will find them later." These two couldn't be more opposite.
Joy in watching Baby Boy tell his dad that the Easter Bunny always hides chocolate eggs on the tops of doorframes, remembering I thought the same thing when I was little and my dad would line them up so high.
Joy in watching our big kids giggling about 'the Easter Bunny' and joining in hunting down baskets and bonus quarantine presents. They are such good big siblings to our littles, God really knew what he was doing when he assembled our family.
Joy in our big kids coming home from their moms with bonus Easter gifts for the littles from their mom - bonus family is such an unexpected blessing that you don't think about when you enter into a blended family, but there is just that much more love for all these kids.
Joy in our Easter feast, a fun mix of brunch and dinner that came together perfectly in the end - and in Baby Girl saying grace using the Our Father, skipping a few parts. Different but sweet.
Joy in cuddling for movie time and new scooter tracks in the carpet and boardgames and family messages...
So.Much.Joy.
Hard-fought-for joy still counts as joy. It might even count a little bit more.
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