The Leaving

She wondered,
where had the time gone?
It seemed just yesterday they played,
and held hands on the way
to the park to fly
together down the slide or up
two swings side by side.
Now she is gone, she has left
to go after other dreams

and the child grieves over
her mother’s leaving.

(For L.L. Barkat’s poetry prompt on mothers)

Easter Prerequisite

In shopping malls, men and women wear long fuzzy ears and a bunny mouth fixed in a static grin. Parents and grandparents with their children stand in line for a ten-dollar photo with the Easter Bunny. A shopping woman with a tasteful eye finds the perfect centerpiece. Mothers of girls buy matching dresses with bows.

Two brothers buy ice, beer and Pepsi for the cooler. A boy mows the lawn while his brother wipes down plastic adirondacks for the backyard picnic. Their aunt will hide plastic pastel eggs, and the children hope the ones they find will contain the chocolate Reese’s kind.

A couple buys whole cloves and pineapples for the ham preparation. Another prefers to reserve a ham from Honeybaked. One family makes tamales, another rolls twenty dozen lumpia for deep-frying later.

A family makes their traditional Resurrection Rolls, sealing bread dough around marshmallows and rolling them in cinnamon-sugar. The oven door opens, and sticky fingertips break open the rolls, hollow like the empty tomb and marshmallow-sweet on the bottom.

The preacher prepares his sermon. A youth pastor converts the Youth Annex into the annual “Walk of the Cross.” Congregants sign up for a time slot for this incredible experience. A thirty-voice choir rehearses, and rehearses, and rehearses. Men who will be disciples in an Easter morning drama memorize lines.

These are Easter preparations. Some call it Resurrection Day, and we prepare for the Resurrection! Hallelujah!

As I consider how we and people around us prepare for Easter, I recall a conversation I had with a fifth grader.

In 5th grade Sunday school, my husband and I taught Acts. “What happened to Eutychus while Paul gave a message?” I asked, to review the previous week’s chapter.

“He rose from the dead,” a student answered.

“Right. But before that?” I prompted.

But the student knew and insisted he was right. “He rose from the dead.” Then, adding more details to support the correctness of his answer: “Paul raised him from the dead after he fell out the window.”

I said, “Okay! That’s the answer I wanted: he died. He fell out a third-story window and died.”

The student insisted, “But my answer was right! I said he rose from the dead!”

“True, but I’m saying—in order to be raised from the dead, you have to die first.” (We have nit-picking exchanges like this too often.)

This is the conversation flashback I have as I write about what Easter means to me, and I meditate on the fact that only one thing is required for Easter. It’s not the fancy brunch, or the pretty clothes, or the chocolate eggs, or even the church services. The only requirement for Easter is death. To prepare for the Resurrection, you have to die first.

This was Jesus’ Easter preparation. The Lord had to die first. To get ready for His Resurrection Day, he lived a mystery, entering a mother’s womb. He emerged a babe, in the likeness of man, the very man He created in the likeness of God. He labored among us and dwelt among us. He wept and bled, and He suffered and died, for there is no Resurrection unless there is first death.

So will I prepare, then. I pull out my sheet of Death-to-Self verses and meditate on them. I pray, asking for help and grace to shed myself of all that He does not want in me.

There is no resurrection unless there is first death.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature:
sexual immorality,
impurity,
lust,
evil desires
and greed, which is idolatry . . .

But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these:
anger,
rage,
malice,
slander,
and filthy language from your lips.
Do not lie to each other,
since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

- Colossians 3:5,8-11

(Joining the communities hosted by Ann (Wednesday: “The Practice of Easter”) and Bonnie (Thursday: “Share what Easter means to you”). Click on their badges below to read more community posts on Easter!

To Repent Is To Prepare

John is the messenger sent to prepare
the Lord’s way. What does it mean
to prepare the way of Jesus?

John’s voice cries out. He cries out
in the wilderness—the dry, barren, difficult
place of isolation, heat, thirst. This
is the place John chooses to prepare
the way of Jesus. Why the wilderness?

This is what John cries out: “Make ready
the way of the Lord! Make the Lord’s paths straight!”

If I heard John cry out these words,
would I have known what he meant?
Would I have known how to get things ready
for the Lord?

Would I have repented of my sins?

I get things ready for the way of the Lord
by repenting of my sins. To repent is to prepare
the way of Jesus. Confession paves
a path for the Lord to come onto—as if my life
is part of the route Jesus wants to travel,
and repentance opens wide that path for Him
to accomplish His purposes in me—through me.
He wants to walk on the way that is me,
and my turning from sins opens wide
His paths, removes blockades and detours,
makes His paths straight and smooth.

Jesus, I repent of my sins and surrender my life to You. Let me be an open highway, that You may freely travel to do what You purpose to do in me and through me. Amen.

(Reflections on Mark 1:1-5)

City Girl, Small Town

(For Dena Dyer’s community writing project on cross-cultural experiences.)

I lived in Israel where pita and bread cost only a few coins, children really did call their dads “Abba,” conversation depth went well below the surface within seconds, the front of a book was with the spine on the right, and no one ate cold cereal for breakfast. Yet this culture shock was nothing compared to my first visit to my husband’s (then fiance’s) hometown: Montrose, Colorado.

I grew up in Carson, California (Los Angeles County). I often sum up my L.A. experience in one word: concrete. I went to 232nd Place Elementary School where the baseball diamond was asphalt and the bases, squares of white paint. (No sliding!) In my world then, strangers were dangerous until proven innocent, and real living happened at Del Amo Mall (at the time, the second biggest shopping mall in the world). To me, “Nature” was a television channel.

In the mid-1990s Montrose had a population of about 10,000. It was considered big (and is still the second biggest city in Colorado’s Western Slope (the part of Colorado west of the Continental Divide)). Charles drove me around town to see all the schools he attended. At one point we stopped at what looked to me exactly like a beatiful, red country house.

“This was Menoken-Colcreek Elementary School,” Charles explained. That house was his school. This means the man I was about to marry actually went to a red, two-room schoolhouse. I had heard of people like that, but I didn’t know they existed this side of Little House on the Prairie days. What surrounded this red, two-room schoolhouse? Grass (not concrete)!

The wonders did not stop there. Traffic lights hung and swung freely from cables instead of being fixed to a huge metal arm extending over the street. We went to Wal-Mart, parked the car, and Charles left the car door unlocked. Inside the store, we actually ran into someone he knew.

What a new world! I realized people around here probably borrow a cup of flour from the neighbor now and then. That kind of thing never happened in L.A. When a new neighbor, new to L.A., asked my mother, “Could I borrow some flower?” my mother stood a while at the door, confused. Then she went out to the backyard. My older sister, wondering why mom wasn’t getting the flour, went to the kitchen for it. My sister and mom arrived at the front door around the same time, facing each other. In my sister’s hands was the flour; in my mom’s, a flower in a pot. All three laughed, including the neighbor.

Back to Montrose. I dreaded having to get our marriage license; I anticipated a long wait in crowded lines at the County Courthouse, complicated and expensive parking, and at least half a day spent. Instead, parking was easy, and we were the only ones in line! At the counter I got yet another shock: the clerk said, “Hi, Charles!” She knew him! Not only that, she had known him since he was a boy. They talked pleasantly about our upcoming marriage and his parents while I—city girl in a small town—stood blinking in amazement.

Seventeen years later, I feel I’ve made some good adjustments. I not only smile at strangers but even start conversations with them. Just last week, I asked the librarian about the brace around her hand and wrist (and since have prayed for her). I once gave a gift of homemade soap to a grocery store cashier named Linda, just because we were talking about lye (which my husband needed for a chemistry experiment but they didn’t sell at that store). I don’t fear my neighbors but even knock on their doors with a plate of cookies. And yes, I have borrowed sugar and eggs.

Living with Headaches

Lately, my life has been one long headache.

I’m not talking about the figurative “headaches” of stress or inconveniences but actual, physiological headaches. My migraines began at about age ten, and I normally had them about once a year. Now I seem to have a “new normal” (to borrow a phrase from my friend Beth). In the past several months I’ve had several migraines.

I thought I had migraine management down, like a standard fire-drill procedure or a recipe that always works. As soon as I felt one coming on, I’d quickly drink two mugs of coffee (caffeine), eat two eggs (protein), head down to the cool, dark basement, and lie down. I would usually fall asleep, and two to four hours later—voila!—the migraine was over.

Last month, the standard formula did not work. I had a migraine for more than ten hours. It was enough to worry and even scare me.

A few days later we had dinner guests whose daughter also suffered from migraines. They had been tracking, researching, and trying new things (like dietary changes). The current strategy: no dairy or gluten. “She recently had a migraine that lasted thirty-two days,” the mother explained.

I thought, what’s my ten hours compared to her thirty-two days? What would I do—what kind of Christ-follower would I be—if my migraines escalated to that point?

Last week I was sick for two days with something else. I minimized my tasks, doing only what I considered highest priority. After putting lunch on the table, I went to bed. A few hours later I put dinner on the table, then went to bed. Under these circumstances I cannot teach Bible studies, teach home school, make and deliver a meal, or exercise. Migraines keep me from singing, attending worship services, and (certainly!) playing drums.

Those two days were not “normal life.” Being sick more often has pushed me into wondering, and I did wonder. What if my health pattern changed, and sick days outnumbered the healthy days? What should be my response? I’m still pondering that and asking the Lord for insight. So far I know I would want to be one for whom the joy of the Lord is obviously my strength. I would want to retain and even grow godly character traits like peace, love, and selflessness. I would have to learn now to praise God in ongoing pain. I would have to give up serving Him in the ways that I’m used to.

For the most part, I don’t know. Yet I do know that, whatever the circumstance, His purposes and desires for me still stand. Though I don’t have the answers yet, I will continue to:

“Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is, and walk in it;
And you shall find rest for your souls.”

(Jeremiah 6:16)

(This week Bonnie Gray asks, “What new things are you learning in your relationship with Jesus?” Visit Bonnie on Thursday (click on the Faith Barista badge below) to read more posts addressing her question.)

Rock Heart

The forgiven heart turned
from cold stone to flesh
is the heart that finds
hearts among stones.
The forgiven is he who can see
hearts in the gravel.

I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.

(Ezekiel 36:26)

(Photo: friend’s collection of heart-shaped rocks)

For Thomas Turner’s poetry prompt at The High Calling.