What We Did For Easter

Easter was not be the same. No way. No how. In this blog I am not going to talk about the true meaning of Easter because that is a given. You get it. You know it. Easter clothes and bunnies and hidden eggs do not change or make better or help in any way the good news of a risen king, Jesus Christ. That is what every celebration is about— Jesus Christ died on a cross, but three days later rose from the grave!

That is the most important news you will hear ALL. DAY. LONG.

But, still, many of us open our homes on Easter for family and friends to share Easter lunch and watch the kids hunt eggs in the front yard. And, that didn’t happen. At least, not to the degree it usually does. 

Our small quarantine crew decided to have Easter lunch on Saturday since Sunday was predicted thunderstorms and we were correct in doing that. Easter, in the south, was a stormy day. Any thought of an Easter egg hunt was washed away in the wee HOURS of the morning when the heavens opened and the rain fell. For our small town, a tornado touched down and damaged twenty houses and the airport, but no serious injuries were reported. Praise God. 

So, Saturday was the perfect day for our mini-celebration. And, it was glorious. My mom, who lives across the street from us cooked like she hadn’t cooked in four weeks. LOL. She truly outdid herself with pork loin, sweet potatoes, pies, cakes, fruit salad—you get the picture. It was yummy! We followed lunch with the annual Easter egg hunt. I included pictures so you could see what a typical hunt looks like at our house and the one from yesterday with our lone little kid egg hunter, our little Zane. Lol But, we had so much fun because we talked (bribed) all the big kids into hunting with Zane by telling then there was money in the eggs. That always works and we loved watching them run all over the yard. Plus, we played a few games like an egg toss and sack race.

Last week, anticipating not getting to see the rest of our large family at Easter, I set about making an Easter treat for each one.  There are twelve houses in my neighborhood that are family members. (Pretty sweet deal. I know.) Since we are social distancing from most of them, we did not see them for the lunch and hunt this year, so I decided to make Easter baskets for all of them. I delivered them on Good Friday. Here’s what I did.

I got up in the attic and found every spare Easter basket I could find and, trust me, some of them are from years and years ago. Then, I made some cookies (See pics. I’ll put the recipe in another blog. So good!), stuffed some plastic eggs with candy, recruited my sweet college-aged friend, Brittany, (she lives with me) to paint an Easter scripture- picture, and created a fun basket to leave at the door of all my family members. Others in our family-neighborhood had done the same for us by leaving little treats by the door at some point during this crisis, so I wanted to do the same. My daughter and her family live in Alabama so we didn’t get to see them, but it was fun reading about what they did. They made packages with games for all of their neighbors. One of the best things to come from this dreaded virus is the support of friends all over the world. Truly amazing. 

Easter Sunday was pretty low key. Our sweet Sadie spoke at the Passion City Church service, so of course, we watched that service as well as our local church.  We were blessed by both. Later that day, we watched the Passion of the Christ. As I mentioned, we have a college-aged girl, Brittany, living with us and she had never seen it. It is such a gripping portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s hard to watch, but important so we never forget the sacrifice made for us.

I pray your Easter weekend was as perfect as it can get in today’s world. I loved all the pics on social media of families dressing up and staying home. I was thinking how ironic is it that the command to go out into all the world might actually come true when everyone has to stay home because no other time in history could so many be able to hear the good news of Jesus from their living rooms than now. Wow! 

Have a great weekend . Say safe. We’ll be at the end of this soon.