Easter Day dawns bright and surprisingly warm. I get up early to continue dinner preparations. Cutting cauliflower for the salad, counting out plates, hefting the HUGE ham into the roasting pan. At my last count, 19 people are coming for dinner. But since math has never been my strong suite, I lay out a couple of extra plates.
I check to make sure nothing unforeseen and tragic has happened to the cake in the night. I baked it yesterday—my first sheet cake. (And yes, I DID pray that it would come out of the pan in one piece!) I’ve decorated it with purple flowers and the words: Happy Easter.
A big basket of bright plastic eggs sits on the counter. They are stuffed with chocolates, TootsieRolls, jelly beans. When I realized I’d bought too much candy…I went and bought more eggs. There has to be close to 100 there now.
We attend church as a family—taking up a row and a half. Afterwards, I hurry home to get the potatoes in the oven and make the dressing for the salad. Soon we’re all together and, after my husband’s blessing, begin devouring the food I’ve been making for two days.
“Time for the egg hunt, Nina!” my 6-year-grandson Drake calls as soon as he’s swallowed the last bite on his plate.
The men hide the eggs while the children wiggle nervously inside the house.
“When are they going to be done?” 4-year-old Brock asks over and over.
Five kids—ranging in age from 6 years to 20 months—head out into the yard, empty baskets over their arms. In a flash of color and purpose, they scatter.
All except the youngest, my grandson Mace. This is his first egg hunt. He walks out the sunroom door and, promptly, finds a blue egg with white polka dots. He picks it and turns it over. Then he sees a camouflage one and grabs it, too.
“Come on, Mace!” his mother Amy Jo encourages, waving his empty basket. “Let’s go get some eggs! Lots of eggs out here!”
But Mace is oblivious to her entreaties. He sits down in the grass and discovers—wonder of wonders!—that the eggs open. And inside are bright, foil candies. He laughs. “Ball! Ball!” He puts the chocolate in, takes it out. Around him the other children swirl like a tide pool, but Mace refuses to be sucked in. He is happy. Content. He has an egg in each hand. Eggs open, close. Balls go in, out. Repeat.
I watch Mace as early spring sun glints off his hair. Such a small bounty; such a complete contentment. And I pray for the wisdom to slow down and notice—really notice—just how full my own hands are with God’s blessings.
It’s hard for me to get excited about Palm Sunday. Hard for me to be enthusiastic about Christ’s “triumphant entry” into Jerusalem. I know too much about what’s coming. Besides, I’ve lived long enough to see firsthand that people are fickle, fame is fleeting…and suffering can be all too real.
Thank God for the children!
Every year, the children at our church open the Palm Sunday service by processing into the sanctuary waving palm leaves. They are unabashed. Giddy. Slashing the air with their whips of green. Smiling. It’s a parade! Yeah, Jesus!
Their joy is infectious.
Growing up, I attended a small white frame church that was very low-key when it came to things like Lent and palm branches. Maybe we’d get a solitary lily on the communion table Easter Sunday.
Years later, a full-grown Christian hungry for ritual and liturgy, I’d take the train into Chicago and attend services at Holy Name Cathedral every Palm Sunday. Once, I even processed down the aisle of that grand structure with others, waving palm leaves and shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
High theatre. And, for me, good church.
Palm Sunday begins Holy Week. A sober week of reflection and mourning. Bad things are going to happen to Jesus. Maundy Thursday is coming. Good Friday is coming.
But so is Easter.
The kids help me remember this. The end of the story is a happy one. For me. You. All of us.
Luke’s version of this event includes the Pharisees insistence that Jesus control the unbridled praise the crowd is offering him. Jesus replies, “"I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."
Either the stones or the children.
I brought a palm leaf home from church yesterday. Maybe it’s not too late to wave it….
Once again, I find myself tackling something I have no known talent for.
In an effort to keep life interesting (and myself humble!), I made the decision to take a new class (or two) each year. Something I’ve never tried. Something I know nothing about. Something I’m sure to find challenging.
Last year I took cake decorating. (I didn’t even own cake pans when I enrolled.) I signed up for photography, too. (My tiny pink camera was dwarfed by all those big black ones other people pulled out of their bags!) And now…I am surrendering three consecutive Saturdays to a mosaic class.
Our instructor, Becky, is bubbly and very into crafting. A stained glass artist, she offers us shoeboxes filled with scraps of stained glass. Instantly, I am enchanted. Russets and mauves, cobalt blue and sunset orange, deep forest green and royal red. Gingerly I poke through these pieces, leftovers from projects others have done. Castoffs perfect for the tiny pieces I’ll need to do a mosaic creation.
“You can use pieces of china, too,” Becky says, pulling a beautiful cup out of its box. “My friend sent me this from Australia, and it arrived with a broken handle.” The cup features a vivid blue parrot, red flowers with green leaves. “If anyone wants this…” I jump up and call, “Dibbs!”
The class description had promised that we would create a “birdbath.” Turns out their idea of a birdbath is two clay flower pots stuck together with a clay saucer on top.
Uh…I don’t think so.
I promptly decide to make a “tray”—something I can use on my table this summer to showcase a flickering candle.
Snip by snip I cut the pieces I’ll need. “You can do a design or a random pattern,” Becky says. Random pattern it is! (I refuse to be intimidated by the girl across from me who is making a water lily floating in water.)
“I like this color,” I say, holding up an oddly mottled piece of glass.
“That’s ‘end of the day’ glass,” Becky replies. “It’s made from whatever’s left after the runs are completed. It’s different every day.”
It promptly becomes my favorite piece.
It takes me three weeks to cut and glue, to grout and clean, to sponge on a finishing top coat.
I like my tray. And I like the idea of mosaics—tiny pieces making up a whole. Little things given great importance. Castaways recycled into lovely creations.
Art imitating life…in the very best way.
BTW: That's a piece of "end of the day" glass just to the right of the parrot's head.
There are lots of things I love about being a grandmother (aka: Nina).
I love how 2-year-old Isabelle Grace throws her arms around my knees when she comes to visit and says, “Nina, I missed you!”
I love how 6-year-old Drake always asks where I’m going to sit, so he can sit next to me. I love how 4-year-old Brock is constantly presenting me with gifts of handmade “crafts.”
I love how 19-month-old Mace yells “Nina, Nina!” every time I walk into his house. And I love how 7-month-old Knox…well, I just love everything about him.
But this week I got to do something I really loved. Something I’ve been looking forward to for many years.
I gave Bibles to my two oldest grandchildren.
“I need a Bible for church,” Drake said. At 6, he is beginning to learn that there is more to faith than stories and Kool-Aid.
“I need one, too!” his younger brother Brock proclaimed.
So a few days ago, I drove to their house with Bibles for them both. They were thrilled! As they leafed through the hefty volumes, Drake—who has just been introduced to “chapter books”—said, “Wow, there’s a lot of pages!”
Brock was interested in all the “colored boxes” that were included in his, sidebars that explained Biblical principles in kid language. “Read this one, Nina.” So I read about animals boarding the ark and the tomb where Jesus was laid and the excitement of the Apostle Paul’s shipwreck.
I wasn’t much older than Drake when I began reading the Bible. It was my mother’s idea. I would sit on a stool while she made dinner and struggle my way through a chapter of the King James Bible, with Mother offering explanations as I went along. I have always loved the Bible—its melodies, its wisdom, its comfort and humor and hope.
Last night Drake and Brock spent the night at my house. They brought along their Bibles.
“They’ve been carrying them everywhere!” my daughter Amy Jo said, laughing. “They even sleep with them!”
That made me happy. Of course, I know, in time, the “newness” will wear off, and the Bibles will be relegated to the bookshelf and Sunday morning outings to church. But I’m believing those Bibles will be read, too.
My prayer is that Drake and Brock—and all my grandchildren—will learn to love the Word of God. And that they will carry it the most important place of all…in their hearts.
Sure, I have purple flowers around me at other times, but the ones I buy on March 5th are always special. They are for Mother.
It was on a gray, windy March 5th fourteen years ago that Mother died. Slipped away while I stood watching at her bedside. Exchanged that hospital gown for a heavenly white robe —in the blink of an eye, in the beat of a heart.
This year I bought two bouquets. One was for me to keep close by, and one was for me to leave for Mother. “I want something really purple,” I told the florist, pawing through his fresh flowers. “What about these?” I asked, touching the open throat of a stunning iris. “How long do they last?”
“Not long,” he replied. “A couple of days.” He reached for another stem of heartier, smaller blossoms. “This statice will last much longer.”
“I’ll take small bouquets of each. And can you put a purple bow on the statice?”
Back in my car, I head toward the place where I’ll lay this memorial offering. It’s not Mother’s grave. That’s 250 miles away, in the small town where I was raised. Instead, I go to a park near my home. Part of the National Lakeshore, it contains several of the first homesteads in our area. And one of the oldest cemeteries.
I hike the trail into the woods, snow hard and icy under my boots. My feet slip and I clutch the bouquet. It seems especially vivid here surrounded by bare trees and well-worn snow. I hum Mother’s favorite hymns. “Victory in Jesus.” “The Old Rugged Cross.” And the one we sang at her funeral: “It Is Well With My Soul.”
Soon I see it—the 15-foot wooden cross that sits in the middle of the small cemetery. I climb the steps up to it. No footprints mar the snow near it; I make mine reverently. After wedging the bouquet into a stone at the base of the cross, I touch my forehead to its hard surface. One more time, I whisper my thanks and love to Mother.
Today the irises sit on my desk, early spring sun shining through their petals like a kiss from heaven. They still look fresh and perfect, even after four days. Just proves that some things last longer than expected—things like bouquets. And grief. And gratitude. And love.
Loves it. That was her very word as we stood outside our church’s fellowship hall. “I love Lent!”
I stared at her in disbelief. How can anybody love Lent?
For one thing, it comes at the tail-end of winter, when I am sick-to-death of the sloppy, cinder-ridden snow that spackles the landscape. Plus, it’s a time of self-examination and self-sacrifice. I’m not very good at either of those things.
“Why do you love Lent?”
Kathy was thoughtful for a moment. “It’s so spiritually charged. And it’s a lot like Advent.”
Like Advent? No, no, no. Advent is all fresh pine and presents. Lent is all splintery wood and sharp nails. Advent is cards and carols and pageants where 5-year-old angels steal the show. Lent is torn purple cloth and pain. Advent is about a baby come as God’s greatest gift and Lent is about…
Wait. I’m beginning to see the similarities. Lent is the end of the story Advent begins. The baby in the manger is the man on the cross. The love that nested in Mary’s womb is the love that hung bleeding, suspended between heaven and earth. Advent and Lent. You can’t have one without the other.
My head filled with these thoughts, I head toward the prayer labyrinth Kathy has set up for the Lenten season. On the floor of the fellowship hall, masking tape marks a winding path that draws you round and round until you find yourself at the center of the large maze, facing a silver cross. This year something new has been added. Each person who comes to the labyrinth brings a “gently used” pair of shoes for the Soles4Souls charity. I clutch a cute pair of black flats. Amid candlelight and soft music, dozens of shoes and boots stand toe-to-heel, flanking me as I enter the labyrinth to pray. Step by step I make my way to the center. I place my offering of shoes at the foot of the cross with the others, praying for whomever will wear them.
Love Lent? I’m not quite there. But, thanks to my friend Kathy’s quiet example, I am more ready to embrace the solemnity of Christ completing his mission. More appreciative of the “joy that cometh in the morning” for all who are faithful.
Hark, the herald angels sing!
Glory to the newborn, crucified, risen King!
Today I volunteered in my grandson Drake’s kindergarten classroom. One of the mothers had volunteered, too. Seems the theme of the day was all things Chinese. While the teacher read aloud a book about a little boy who invited a dragon to his birthday party, an aide took us aside.
“We have two centers this morning. At one the children will use paint and brushes to write Chinese numbers. The other center will be tangrams.”
I looked at the black paint and brushes and thought about all the possibilities for spills and thrills…and promptly volunteered to do tangrams.
“Oh, it’s where you cut seven shapes from a square and then you make things with them.”
I froze in place. Cutting, I could do that. But arranging shapes to make…I glanced down at the stack of pages she had thrust into my hand. A house? A goose? A rabbit? A cat? Spatial relationships were so not my thing! I mean, it almost always takes me two or three tries to get my shoes back into their boxes. (I wish I were making that up…)
Too late now. Here they came. Jostling, eager kindergarteners, clustered into groups of six. “Let’s all cut out our shapes and see what we can make with them. Just use your imagination!” I told the first group.
“I’m done,” the girl to my left said…every two seconds.
“Can I make a rocket ship?” a boy in a plaid shirt asked.
“Sure!”
“What about the things on this sheet? Can we make them?”
No, I thought. And neither can I.
By the time the second group was settled and began cutting, I decided I needed to learn how to make at least one of the “suggested” pictures. The house. How hard could it be? Start with the big triangle. Wait…were there two the same size? Three more triangles to make the house, another big triangle and a parallelogram to make the roof. (Did 6-year-olds know what a parallelogram was?) Square for the chimney. WAL-LAH!
The third group included a girl in a cute ponytail…who promptly made the goose. If she can do it, I can do it…
By the time I'd done all five groups, I’d mastered the cat, too. The rabbit? Well, that would have to wait for my next tangram adventure.
The funny thing was, most of the kids preferred to make their own pictures from the shapes. “Guess what this is?” they demanded again and again, a proud smile on face after face. “It’s a tree.” “It’s a rocket.” “It’s a flower. See the petals?” “It’s a tent. We go camping in the summer.”
Pieces of paper, pieces of life. Edges clean and newly-scissored. Edges uneven and cut with a wobbly hand. But all of it coming together to make something new. Something original. Something unique.
Something of beauty.
Today I took a square and cut it into 7 shapes and built a house. No shoebox will ever intimidate me again!
At least it was an “act of God” that kept me there the first day. But it took a conspiracy of all the major airlines to really delay my return home.
Last week I flew to New York for a business meeting. It was a one-day event scheduled for Tuesday. So I flew out on Monday and booked a late flight out on Wednesday, so I could take in some of the city.
But mid-way through the meeting the buzz began outside the conference room door. Storm coming. Snow. Blizzard. Airlines canceling flights. I rebooked my flight for mid-morning on Thursday, sure everything would be fine by then.
I was wrong, wrong, wrong. By Thursday morning the airports were completely shut down. Hundreds of people were stranded there, sleeping on chairs and eating day-old food. When I tried to rebook my cancelled flight, my airline told me the soonest I could get on a plane was Saturday evening. WHAT? I called Amtrak. Yes, I could get from NY to Chicago via train…but it would mean riding the rails for 20 hours. I tried buying a one-way ticket on another airline. One-way tickets were going for $800 to $1100 dollars. Yikes!
I needed to get home. I had things to do. I was supposed to help my daughter with my grandsons. I was leading a Bible study. I had a children’s sermon to prepare. I was planning….
Well, it didn’t matter what I was planning. I was stranded in New York. So I made some phone calls, pulled on my fur-lined boots (which I had had the good sense to travel in) and went out into the city. Might as well embrace this turn of events as to protest.
Snow had transformed Manhattan. Taxi horns seemed muted. Street signs and church rooftops were frosted in white. I walked down to Herald Square (as in “give my regards to Broadway, remember me to Herald Square”) and found two girls from Brazil building a snowman.
A deliveryman stomping through the snow was singing to himself. I stood in line for half-price theatre tickets and talked with people from Argentina, China, Jersey. (Thanks to so many folks not being able to get into the city, I got an eighth-row center seat!) Tourists were having snowball fights in Times Square.
On Friday, I found an Episcopal church that was having a mid-day communion service. I sat in the massive sanctuary with three other people while the robed priest ministered to us. On my way out, I paused in the chapel to pray for my family and light a few candles.
Maybe God really did want me to stay in New York City. Perhaps He knew I needed to see sun glint off skyscrapers instead of icicles hanging from our barn. That I needed to see people—hundreds of them during my forays into the streets—who looked oh-so-different from me. Maybe it was time I heard the music of languages other than English, the resonance of accents not formed in Midwest towns.
God (being God) knew that not doing the things on this week’s “to-do list” was more important than crossing off pre-planned tasks. He knew I needed time to be alone, to walk, to feed my need for good theatre. I needed to receive a wine-dipped wafer from the hand of an Episcopal priest while taxies jostled just outside the church door. I needed to be reminded (again) of how little control I really have over my life. And that that’s okay. Better than okay.
My last day in the city, I bought a sweatshirt that reads: I (heart) New York. And I really do.
Now all I have to do is explain my expense report, explain how I came for a day meeting and stayed for a week.
Is there anything as beautiful as green leaves in January?
What a treat it was for me last week to climb aboard a plane in cold, gray Chicago and deplane in warm, sunny (SUNNY!) Florida. The only thing better than the climate was the company: my good friend Debbie.
Debbie and I met years ago at a writer’s conference. I was teaching a class on creativity and, with more than 60 million books in print, she was the keynote speaker. Of course, I didn’t know that when we met. She was a fan of mine via Daily Guideposts—and I was ignorant of just what a publishing phenom she was/is. Yes, Debbie is a very famous. And hardworking. Perhaps those two go hand-in-hand?
But the thing that impresses me most about Debbie, the thing I find endearing is that she is a truly generous, spiritual person. Every day, before we head off on shopping adventures or beach walks or to see the latest movie, Debbie sits down at the kitchen table with a TALL stack of devotional books and Bibles. She reads passages in each one, writes in two journals, and solemnly puts it all away…before the fun begins.
Except that I know what she’s doing is fun for her. Too many people think spirituality and fun are mutually exclusive. But what could produce more endorphins, give more pleasure, bring out more smiles than filling one’s mind with Truth, than opening one’s heart to joy?
I’ve always said my theology is simple: God is great…God is good…and God has a sense of humor. I know Debbie would concur. What else could account for the fact that we sisters in Christ laugh so much?
I look forward to my yearly visit to Florida to see Debbie. It’s a bright spot for my spirit as well as my eye.
Now that I think about it, I guess there is one thing as beautiful as green leaves in January. The welcoming smile of a seldom-seen friend.
P.S. That's Debbie's doggie in the picture: Bogie Beauregard Macomber.
My husband Gary and I have been married for a very long time. We met in college. (I got a degree; he got me.) I was 19 when I married Gary, young enough to be oblivious to just how young we really were. Less than a year after the wedding, Gary was drafted into the Army. I left school and followed him—Ft. Polk in Louisiana, Ft. Benning in Georgia, Ft. Knox in Kentucky, and Ft. Riley in Kansas. (It was there, in a military hospital, that our daughter was born.)
Long-term love and commitment can be tricky. Especially when people are as different as Gary and I. I love books; he likes football. My idea of an evening out is a play; his is a movie with at least one good car chase scene. I like a restaurant with cloth napkins and vegetarian entrees. He's just looking for a good hamburger. Gary has his own excavating business, and you’ll most likely find him on a jobsite, running his excavator or bulldozer, muddy and happy to be that way. I’m more likely to be at my desk, working on a story, Gregorian chants coming from my CD player. I like to travel; Gary likes to stay home. But, as my friend Lurlene reminds me, we agree on the big things. Money. Religion. Children. And monogamy—we’re big fans of monogamy.
Gary isn’t much for sending me flowers. The last time he sent them was…uh…let’s see. Never mind! And the last “real” piece of jewelry he bought me was 15 years ago. But he shows his love in so many other ways. He lets me hold the bag of popcorn at the movies. He calls me in the afternoon and asks, “What are we doing for dinner?” So if I don’t want to cook, I just say, “Going out!” He builds a fire in our woodburning stove before he leaves for work, so the room is toasty warm when I go out there to read my Bible each morning.
Recently, I mentioned to Gary that I needed paper towels. “We just use so many of them when the kids and grandchildren are here. Seems I’m always running out.” The next day I was in my car, getting ready to back out of the garage, when I looked on top of the refrigerator we have out there and saw…paper towels. Rolls and rolls. I turned off the car and got out. There were 45 rolls of paper towels!
When I asked Gary about them, he said, “I was at the lumber yard and remembered you wanted paper towels. So I bought you some.” And then he smiled, the same smile that had melted by heart forty years ago.
Yes, long-term love and commitment can be tricky. Challenging. Hard work. But oh-so-very-worth it.
