Easter Worship
I was so excited about Easter weekend. It was also our anniversary weekend, so we left the kids at my moms Saturday around lunch. We spent the afternoon dating. Which at our age and time of life basically means running errands. But together. Seriously, the bank, the grocery store, we did it all. Just keeping it real. But then we headed to Simcoe. Some friends of ours work in a church there and we knew that they had put an enormous amount of work into an Easter presentation so we wanted to go see it. Because when you’re middle aged and church staff, you run errands and then go to church for fun. But someone else’s church. All of the fellowship, fun, worship, tears, and none of the work. You enter only ten minutes before. This is serious Saturday night fun for us! And it was amazing. Really amazing. And we went out with our friends after and I ate half (or maybe 2/3) of a Big Mac, and I have this weird weakness for those, so that was fun too. I really don’t understand myself. I’m completely against fast food, white food, sugar food, but put an opportunity to eat a Big Mac and fries in front of me and I’m there. We stayed out way too late, but hey, we were partying big time so it was ok. The next morning was going to be amazing, because the only thing more fun than going to someone else’s church is going and working at your own church. Seriously. I had beautiful Easter slides picked out for the morning announcements, prayer time with the ladies that meet before Sunday School, helping my mom set up for family Easter dinner and of course, I had to curl my girls hair. I was so looking forward to an amazing day of remembering the Lord, worshiping together in church, time with family, and of course, Easter dresses.
Around 4am I heard, “Mom! Arianna’s throwing up in the bathroom!”. Nothing like pretending you’re not a middle aged mom until 12:30 and then being reminded at 4 that you are. At 5am I was braiding hair and rubbing a back. Arianna usually has a strong stomach, so this was rather traumatic for her. By the time 8:30 rolled around, I had cleaned up about 8 times. When I woke Michael up at 6am, I found out that he had been up throwing up in the night too. And then they both got fevers. So, he stayed back with Arianna while I took the other two to church.
Easter was still amazing. I still enjoyed the service, but I was exhausted. I yawned through Sunday School, but thankfully I played keyboard in the service and that always helps keep me awake. Then it was family dinner, make sandwiches for fellowship, pack everything up and head back to church.
It just wasn’t the way I envisioned it. Easter is supposed to be full of warm, fuzzy feelings. Of closing your eyes in worship instead of trying to keep them open. Of pretty Easter dresses and warm family memories instead of cleaning baseboards and toilets. Of focusing on the Lord instead of coordinating bowls, gatorade, and ginger ale. I didn’t even get to take the required family-social-media-picture.
Then my Pastor said something interesting in the evening service. “I didn’t want it to snow today, but then I thought, its the Lord’s Easter and if He wants it snowy, then I can be happy it snowed”. Well, that might not be an exact quote. I was exhausted, remember? But I think that was the gist of it. And it got me thinking. This Easter was not my plan, but it was His. I planned warm and fuzzy worship and He planned service. Because, after all, shouldn’t cleaning up after my children be worship anyways? What if I could remember that every day? Every time I do laundry, clean the house, mop up more mud (ugh, camp in the spring!), or any other thing I do. What if they could all be acts of worship? Because they should be. I just don’t remember. I tend to think that worship is only done in church and is most effective on special occasions. But sometimes the most effective is showing the love of God to a sick child at 4am. Easter turned out pretty well after all.
Random picture from the day before when we went out for breakfast at a farm. Yup, those are cows, Just in case you think this does not qualify as an Easter picture, there were bunnies and chicks in the barn. So there's that.