Here I am : No chocolate bunnies

You know how they say if you pray for patience, God doesn't give you patience, but gives you opportunities to grow in patience?

Well, here I am.

I've been praying that this Easter, the Lord would renew it's meaning in my life.  That the cross, the empty tomb, would touch my heart in a new and real way.  That what is important would resinate, and that the fluff would decrease.

That Easter would be stripped of it's frill and that the iron nails, the damp tomb, the run of Mary, would pierce, would solemn, would thrill my heart.

Here I am.

Tomorrow morning, my little girls will put back on their filthy travel dresses in place of their fluffy pastel Easter dresses waiting at home in their closets.  For the first time in my LIFE, there will be no Easter morning service...we will be standing instead at the border, trying.  In place of Easter brunch, there will be whatever junk food we can find that fell between the car seats for breakfast.  There will be no precious hymns, no Easter baskets, no chocolate bunnies.  

Here I am.

In a filthy border city that speaks neither of my two languages, most everything closed, stuck between a third world county and a fifth world country, in a hotel whose very name commemorates the horrific murders of 20-30 THOUSAND Haitians when the drunken Dominican president of 1937 encouraged their slaughter.  In a place we do NOT want to be with 10 discouraged and exhausted adults who do not want to be here with 8 little ones we're trying to chin up for.

Here I am, with no promise of going home tomorrow, nowhere to turn back to, a credit card that despite calling ahead to warn of international travel is blocked and will not work, a cell phone that won't work on this side, with no plan and no way and nothing I can do.

And as I'm laying here in my Massacre Hotel bed, dirty and tired and frustrated, I tell Him how I really feel.

I just want to be home.  It's Easter.  And now there will be none.



The moment the thought entered my mind, He refuted it.



NOTHING of EASTER has CHANGED, Stacey.  Not a WHIT.

This pathetic little situation doesn't TOUCH Easter.  Doesn't touch it.

There will be no dresses, no service, no bunnies, no hymns, no quiche, no chats with family and that does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO EASTER.

I am entirely silenced.


You are right, I concede, closing my eyes.  My heart breaking with the stones that day.  Ashamed.  

He was on that cross, in that tomb.  Because of the Massacre of 1937.  Because of my bad attitude.  Because of all the ME in my heart that I have chosen a million times over YOU, over Him.  

I can hear their blood cry out, those 30,000.  And then I hear HIS.

This Easter morning, He is risen, He is risen indeed.  He is THE living among the dead, THE risen among the many fallen.  He is alive and well and risen that I might be, too.  

In every place, in every moment, in every circumstance.  That Easter--not it's bunnies, nor it's traditions nor even it's hymns--might live in my heart.  Every moment.  

Here I am.

I sit here in the dark with my headache and my fatigue and self-pity, He has given me exactly what I asked for....an empty tomb.

This is the Easter the frills are all removed, the Easter the nails are all I have to think on.  This is the Easter that the lone, dark tomb between home and a hard place is where I am.  

Most, this is the Easter that all I have, with the rising sun, is He is Risen.  He is Risen, Risen Indeed.

Will my heart run with Mary's, even stuck and frustrated and uncertain and dirty?  Even without a moving sermon?  Even without a powerful praise chorus? Is it as true in my life as it was that glorious day? 

Is it Easter, all the same?


I determine, tonight, it is more so.  

The only real thing I need tonight is not to be home in my own bed, is not that long-awaited sunrise service, is not a guarantee of how it's gonna go tomorrow.

I need a GodMan who bridged my gap and Who is alive to talk about it.

And that, my family, I have.

It is Easter, after all, in my heart.

Wherever we are, today, as we eat and pray and sing and hear and celebrate and remember, may it be our Living Savior and nothing else that deeply prods, deeply stills and deeply satisfies our hearts.  Happy Easter, family!