Grass and Hope

It was a different sort of Easter.
For starters, we weren't allowed to say "Easter."
Apparently the entire season is drenched in paganism, including the word we've always used to describe it.
So we had "Resurrection bags,"
and we tried to say,
"Happy Resurrection Day,"
or, as always,
"He is risen!"
answered by,
"He is risen, indeed."

I started the wheat grass way too late.
This is how it looked this week.
Just like our terrible late spring,
everything feels slow, as though
we are lurching towards life,
not springing towards it.

This year we hosted our parents for the first time ever.
It was wonderful.
And although my father-in-law is suffering from Parkinson's
(which means everyone who loves him also suffers from it),
the time together seemed set apart.

As I rocked Malachi and held him through his naptime,
the others quietly helped with the clean-up.
And I thought about the life that comes, after the death.

I thought about what our family has survived,
these last seven years.
The things that God allowed so that we could be more broken
than we had ever offered to be.
We almost never choose the ways we participate in His sufferings.

Malachi with his two Grandmas

So we stumble into spring,
thankful and not entirely whole.
It looks like hope,
to be like that wheat grass seed.
Dead, dry, covered,
watered, sunned, and then,
when the time is right,
coming to life.

Thank you, Jesus,
for the power of the resurrection.