April 23, 2011

Greetings My Friend,

Tomorrow is Easter. This is the day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection. Jesus walked among us after He had died as well. He was three days in the grave and on the third day He rose again. Then Jesus walked among us for 40 more days. This is one of those Wow moments for me. As I pray I find myself in many states of awe moments. To think that God would send His only Son to live in our world filled with filth, violence and a whole host of other not pretty things is a marvel to me. About now I think of the verse “For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” I feel a deep love from God and to God.

I have always believed there was a God. I even believed that Jesus lived but I never knew how to enter into a relationship with Him. For most of my life, Christmas and Easter was about family. It was a time to gather and celebrate the family structure, the generations etc. Very little thought went into Jesus, His birth, His death, the reason He left God’s side to live among us.

Since I have been married to Junior, we have spent many holidays away from family, for a variety of reasons. Let me side track a moment. Divorce is so hard on families. My son comes to mind. His parents are divorced. His wife’s parents are divorced. Holidays are especially difficult for them. There are four parents to visit plus a set of grandparents at one point. The grandparents have now passed on. There are only so many hours in a holiday and, there is the family they now have and……

I must admit at first the holidays alone were difficult. As the years have gone on my mindset has changed. The holiday is really about Jesus and God’s provision to redeem us through His Son. Junior and I will go to church and more often than not at church during the service I find myself being ever grateful for the gift of new life I’ve been given. My new life is of course Jesus, God’s love and the transforming of who I was to who I am in Jesus. By the time I walk out of the service I find myself truly happy and content.

If the holiday is a holiday on our own, I find myself content now. Many times I make us a nice meal and we enjoy it. Sometimes we watch holiday appropriate videos and enjoy them to no end. Throughout the day I find myself reflecting on the gift we’ve been given and find myself happy and content.

“Into each life some rain must fall.” I reflect on this statement from time to time. No one gets through life without some sort of heart ache. For me many times the heart ache builds character and perseverance. I am often amazed when I get to the other side of a struggle. I read in Romans 3-4 about this. It says, “More than that. We rejoice, in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces charter, and charter produces hope.”

This verse is one I often reflect on when I am in a struggle. It helps me to see that the struggle will come to an end. It helps me to see that at the end of the struggle I will be stronger and more resilient. I hate hurting. I try to avoid pain whenever I can. I run from it but all of a sudden I find that until I face the struggle and deal with it, I’ll never be able to move forward.

One of the first struggles I remember as a young adult is my husband lost his job. Because of my background of lack of money due to Dad’s polio, I was panicked. I remember fretting and worrying and a whole host of other paranoid feelings. My husband found a job. We never wound up living on the street. It took me years to realize that we weren’t going to end up living on the streets. If we were late on a payment, I panicked. I felt one step away from living on the street for most of my adult life and to be honest, I’ve never even come close. It took me 10 years to realize Junior was not going to get us in debt and we’d be living on the street.

I believe my years of celebrating holidays on our own has been good for me. I’ve learned to celebrate the gift Jesus is, to accept God’s love. I’ve learned to place the true gift within my heart. Now when I am with family, I appreciate it even more. God allowed me the struggle to help to build within me a true sense of what I’ve been given. I also find moments where I try to bring God into the celebration. At Thanksgiving one year I asked everyone, “What are you grateful for.” We went around the table and gave some thought to the question. For Christmas, I often read out of the Children’s Bible the birth of Jesus. Then we have a cake with candles and sing happy birthday to Jesus. I don’t think I’ve done Easter dinner with the family. I have not come up with a way to introduce my faith at that point.

I believe God allowed the pain of not celebrating holidays with family to help build a true sense of who He is. In my thinking, it has been worth the painful moments. I now celebrate Jesus, God’s love and even am able to hear the Holy Spirit’s prompting more often. I also appreciate those moments when I am with family even more now.
As I end this I’d like to ask, what are you celebrating? What is really on your heart this Easter? Have you taken time to look at the cross, the gift of Jesus and God’s love?

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet