It’s not a normal day but
I treat it like any other and lie there and watch the effects of the sunrise on
my eyelids and listen to my family doing morning things; they’re nice morning
things, like getting ready for Easter and feeding our dogs and going in to
church early to help the kitchen crew get ready for the fundraiser breakfast
which is between the ambitious-bird service and the head-screwed-on-straight
service, which are identical, and I take up the wish I wished the night before
that our family would screw their heads on straight but no, enough of us are
ambitious that my vote doesn’t count, and “besides, the family is coming for
lunch, and they’ll be here before we’d get home from the late service,” and so
my vote really doesn’t count, and I decide that I probably never had a vote to
cast anyway, so I put my wishing aside and go back to telling myself to get up
and telling myself I’ll get up in just a few minutes, but I’m so comfortable
right now, I can’t and so it will be ok if I get up in a minute – it is, but
those minutes must have counted against me, because now we have to “really
hurry” to get the dressing ready for the family who are coming and I don’t have
much time to do any make-up or anything, but then I do it anyway, as fast as I can
because if I’m going to be late to church, I at least want to look good, and it
makes very little difference in minutes because I move quickly; and there is my
brother telling us all we’ll be late, and then that we are late, and then that
he can’t wait to live on his own because we’re always late and he never would
be except for us, and he doesn’t ever seem to stop, so for the longest time on
the way to our Easter morning service, it is so hard to think of the peace and
the joy that are just waiting to be taken up and taken advantage of, and then
we walk in and I didn’t see any heads turn, and then my heart turns and
everything stops, because nothing matters except what we are singing about, and
the glorious way God has loved us and chosen us and suffered for us, and
purchased us, and given us to Christ, that – unless my heart were deaf – I cannot
avoid falling on my heart’s knees and raising my hands and shouting that my God
is alive and he loves me, and he is reigning so everything will be ok! and I
just want to look at his face and know, and then I do know, and I want to keep
looking in his face; and after church each moment seems holy and beautiful, as
if I can do no wrong, and we all file slowly and talking into a huge herd
pretending to be in line and talk our way through heaven-sent sausage and French
toast and sanctifying syrup gluing your silverware to your fingers and your
fingers to each other, and your hair to your forehead, and for breakfast the
pastor has included grace in his benediction so the only words spoken are
conversations about what they did last night and how that worked out, and how
much she got done, and what was he working on again? and did it turn out and is
it worth trying for myself? and then I call Happy Easter and suddenly the sun
and the wind and the blue sky and the green grass are infinitely more beautiful
than they were when I walked from my
house to my car before church and I know the afternoon ahead is going to be wonderful,
even though something inside me knows it’s not and I can’t really pretend it
will be much longer, so when we come home I am less happy, and I do not try to
cheer up but I do wish I could be the same person all of the time and how much
nicer I would be if that were the case, because if I just got stuck being the
right person of the many who are inside of me, I know I could be perfect – but the
perfect one is Christ Jesus, and he is not the only one living in me, because I
am like every other human on this planet in one way, and that is that I’m
human, and it means that even though Christ has the victory over sin, my sin
still fights to often, so even though I side with Christ as much as I … can? I
lose so often and then I know I’ve failed and I go on failing because failing
has made me moody and I think that winning is impossible, even though I’m
failing with the very people who gathered to celebrate that Christ won, so there
is no more failure, and I become meditative and unhappy in my meditation, so I
write it so that I can understand it, and when I write it I find that I can’t
understand it so I give up and make an excuse for writing, and say that I was just
trying writing to see how much I can cram into one sentence, and it turns out
that a lot fits, even if not a lot should, and I wonder where my writing has
taken me, and I find that I’m happy again; writing has taken me to a place
where I feel the joy of creation and the satisfaction of having achieved
something I’ve never done before – perhaps even that I’ve done it well for it
being a first time around – and I decide to contemplate, but this time I’m
contemplating cheerily and it takes me back to praise; praise for that glorious
morning when Christ stopped the people’s contemplating his death and did something about it…basically reverse
it so that they’d have something new to contemplate – the indescribable glory
of the God who raised him, and unfathomable love which inspired the planning of
this action before the planning of the people that necessitated this action,
and the inescapable beauty that surrounds this entire day and it’s glorious
celebration.
(I tried reading this out loud. Now each short sentence feels like a needed revival. Gives me time to breathe.)
