Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

an easter week we will never forget

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, easily my favorite holiday of the year.

Easter represents world-changing miracles and promises kept despite every opposition. Easter means new life. The best life, in fact, springing from absolute grief and apparent defeat. Easter is the resurrection of every good and pure thing, a celebration of the immovable power of Love.

Traditionally, Easter is fresh flowers and home cooked food, baskets filled with chocolate bunnies and colorful gifts, egg hunts and gingham and lace.

(a lifetime ago)
(one of our passover traditions)

Holy Week is also somber remembrances and Bible readings, “blood” around our front door, and white cloth on the cross. This holiday week has always been  busy with church activities and family gatherings, and the details sustain me. They all bind me together in deep places, providing that rhythm of renewal that we need over and over again. (There is no shame in needing renewal, by the way. We are designed for it.)

In many ways, I love Easter more than Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year, combined. Now is when everything actually feels new.

Easter is different this year, in quarantine, but it’s different in some magical ways. I feel it and smell it and hear it coming like birdsong at daybreak. We are renewing ourselves more than ever, despite the changes and limitations. Maybe because of them?

I hope you sense it too. I hope you are able to rest and breathe deeply, still capturing the essence of this special season. I hope you take all the time you need to distill and celebrate the best gifts, because they are still being offered.

(apple blossom)

I am not too upset by missing out on some of the man made trappings of Easter weekend. Traditions are, after all, just outward expressions of what matters to us, physical things we do to rekindle emotions we hold dear. We are all more than capable of accepting new circumstances and applying our imaginations and resources in new ways, to still conjure up those feelings. Maybe even amplify them. Maybe build some magic in brand new ways.

(our dessert tomorrow, for just the two of us)

How are you holding up? Or are you, actually, thriving in this weird time? On a cellular level, safe and hidden from the news cycle and statistics and angst about what is temporarily lost, are you at peace? Are you encouraged and nourished by what is being offered to us, and happy about what is right around the corner? I am. I feel it, like a heartbeat. I am breathing it in, like ozone and honeysuckle and fermenting sourdough. I see the green shoots of New Life bursting through clay and unfurling, silently. Surely. Right on time.

“Heaven took a deep breath and held it,
because everything was about to change.”
~Bob Goff
XOXOXO

no longer surprised by joy

When I first opened my eyes this morning, sunlight was streaming into our bedroom warm and smooth, molten, kinetic. The walls were pulsing with that wonderful early morning sheen, thick with golden light, and then in a moment it was gone. Slipped away in the cleaner white light of day. A rare moment captured.

Then a little bit later when Handsome and I stepped outside with our mugs of perfect coffee, ushering the chickens and geese out of their nighttime coop and tiptoeing towards Hot Tub Summit, we caught another rare moment. The east pasture and middle yard were capped with a thin blanket of wooly fog, rolled out like a blanket no more than twelve or fifteen feet above the ground. Through that fog, more sunlight streaming fiercely, joyously, making every tree branch come to life despite their dormancy. The backlit fog was stunning. And then it was gone, burned off in the warming rays.

These moments were brief but breathtaking, and I am so happy we both got to see them.

Miracles have been happening in our life. Always, yes I know. Life itself is a miracle. But friends… Miracles have been happening. Some of them have been direct answers to prayers, often desperate ones. Many of these prayers are several years old, too. Other miracles have been complete surprises, wonderful doses of saving grace from near tragedy or windfall joy out of the blue.

I try to move slowly through my days whenever possible so I can notice the details of life more fully, absorb them, and magnify the Light streaming in that gilds everything. Ann Voskamp illustrates this discipline beautifully. Besides making the days more lovely, this also serves to calm me with those yet unanswered prayers. I feel steady and sure, confident in the powerful Love surrounding us.

Today I barely feel the need to ask for anything more because the momentum of miracles in our life is so strong, so kinetic. But we are invited to ask largely, so I will. Before that though, and after it and all day every day, my prayer is Thank You. Thank you, and I trust You. I trust you with everything big and small, seen and unseen. Thank You.

 day lilies cs lewis

Are you seeing miracles in your life right now? Do you need a miracle? They are certainly available, and you don’t have to deserve them to receive them. But you do have to ask and trust.

Wishing you a really gorgeous, happy, love-filled Sunday. Handsome and I are soon heading back outside to soak up more unseasonably warm temperatures (Oklahoma still thinks it April, not February) and see what new miracles are on the horizon. Thank you so much for stopping in.

Thank You.
Thank You and I trust You.
XOXOXO