Easter Sunday

Rain shouldn't seem appropriate tonight. But it is.

Easter is a long-awaited holiday in my world. Well, yes in my world of Moody people are waiting to celebrate it - girls are giving up dessert, boys are giving up video games, and the super spiritual among us give up caffeine - and Easter is the day to end such spiritual sacrifices. So we wait for it with great anticipation. But in my world, in my inner thoughts and hidden being, Easter is longed for differently.

See, I love memorials. I will celebrate anything if you give me the chance. A girl on my floor recently got a new job as the assistant to a secretary of some on-campus department. We got ice cream and watched Gilmore Girls to celebrate. An other girl has been broken up with her boyfriend for two months. In my mind, this also calls for ice cream. So, I mean it; I will celebrate anything.

I think part of my love of celebration is the reflection, the memories; looking back to see how much road has been traveled and looking ahead to wonder at the path still unseen. There's something about memorials, rituals, traditions, be they crazy or cliche (like how we do a cliche egg hunt on Easter in my family and match all our church clothes, but used to have this one crazy tree in our front entry way that we hung eggs on. Who has ever heard of an egg tree?!? Alas, I digress. What I was saying was about the rain...)

The rain seems appropriate tonight. There's wonder in rain, an unspoken celebration. Here in the city, it rains infrequently and thunder storms even less. But tonight, Easter night, there's storm right outside my window. As I write, I'm sitting at my desk which faces the window. If I can type well enough without looking, I can see the city lights juxpositioned against the blackening sky. Unfortunately, my fingers don't know their way around the key board that well, and the backspace key is getting over-worked.

So you'll have to wait a minute...

There. It's just ending.

There's a mysterious strength in the storm. In the thunder and lighting I find a silent majesty and whispered praise; in each drop, a profound sadness and echoed ache. And it seems appropriate on this long-awaited Easter day. I love the celebration of a tomb without a body and the traditions my family employs to make the day a holiday. And that's why the rain is appropriate.

This morning I did the praising. I took some of my girls to the beach; few of them had ever seen the sunrise over Lake Michigan. At 5:45 this morning that was remedied. My eyes drank in the flaming orb waking from night and overflowed, splashing on the pages of Luke. He really is risen, isn't He? I thought this morning that reading the resurrection has to be a bit like our entrance into heaven. There has been a load of pain, suffering, torture, loss, grief, and then comes the end of the story. And we realize that it was true all along! We realize we weren't crazy for believing, that He did mean what He said, that it hasn't all been a game. Each striking lightning bolt praises this newness, this Eastering of hope, this resurrection of Jesus.

But the sun rose, day came, church happened, and I found myself sitting in a sparse cafeteria. Easter dinner wasn't quite the same this year. My Diet Coke wouldn't wash past the lump in my throat, and over-cooked broccoli and dry cereal doesn't mix well with tears. Laundry doesn't really compare with an egg hunt or even a stupid egg tree.

I want to be home. There's no other way to say it. I want to be home, to have a place to belong, to have something to do other than sit in my room, alone at my computer, checking facebook for the fifteenth time on Easter Sunday.

This is why the rain is appropriate.

Rejoicing and longing; a smile through tears.

Yes, He is risen indeed.

And yes, today I ache.