Singing in the Graveyard

As with so many things in my life, I'm still trying to figure out how to celebrate Easter.  I woke up in a panic during the night Thursday night.  I realized I had not even thought about Easter baskets.  I am not a celebratory person by nature, so these things are not intuitive to me at all.  I am barely keeping up with maintenance work, so piling on extra seems, well, dumb.  I'm trying to get over this, but it isn't easy.  When I returned from our Holy Saturday Service to the unholy pile of dishes we left from dinner I was questioning my priorities.  A friend commented to me this morning that everyday is a party at our house.  I answered that it is, and every night is like cleaning up after a party.  Somewhere in this I need to find the middle of the road.

Some of the weekend highlights so far have been new Easter outfits.  Rounding up nine new outfits in our shopping wasteland is not an easy task, but everyone looked great this morning.  We would have looked better at 10:00, but maybe next year.  I meant to get their Easter baskets out and set them by their beds so they would have them to wake up to. It was a bit anticlimactic for me to go haul them out after church while everyone waited for me. I need to write that one down so I don't forget on my way out the door at 6:00 am to go sing in the cemetery.  Now this may sound a bit odd, but it was truly awesome.  Of course this year we are having some AMAZING weather for Easter weekend.  I know that snow is not that unusual for this time of year, so next year I need to keep my expectations in check.  Getting up early and joining a crowd of merry folks to sing about new life and the conquering of death among those who have already won was glorious.  Watching the sun rise on the whole occasion really made my heart sing.  What a way to start the season.  That is on the must do list, and I must drag all my children with me.  My quirky friend Joe inaugurated the first annual Easter Apocalypse party last night.  He wanted all ages and genders, and races, and all those other people to get together and kick it Christian style.  He still doesn't quite get that some of us do actually need some sleep at night, so I stayed home with the little people and cleaned the dinner disaster.  The kids that stayed until the cops showed up had the best time.  I think Joe may have in fact accomplished his goal.  For my part next year I will do my best to organize breakfast for the faithful partiers and psalm singers before we all head off to church.  Oh yes, and I really need to remember to color eggs with my younger kids.  I have given in to the plastic eggs are good enough theory, but that is sort of like sporting the fake pre-decorated tree at Christmas.  (No offense to anyone, but I like the real deal.)

This afternoon we will gather at the Quall's home.  This has become our Easter tradition.  Looking back over the years I have many fond memories of this event.  Dr. Leithart grilling burgers, Tage grabbing the electric fence, Asher hiding eggs for the kids, loading the trampoline to capacity with teens, romances begun, sunburns a plenty, older kids hiding eggs for younger kids, the number of children growing and growing and growing.  I hope we are still doing this when all of us moms give in and sport our white hair, and our daughters are slaving away at feeding the crowd while we hold the grand babies and laugh at all the noise.  This is the family God has given me, and it is crazy wild.  I wouldn't want it any other way.  He is risen!

I'm thankful for...

Young people

Wiggly children at church to keep me from being too serious

Wonderful prayers from godly men

Singing

Coffee, just keep it coming

New clothes

Jelly Belly's and Reece's peanut butter eggs

The smell of coffee cake baking in the oven

Phone calls from Nes early in the morning wondering where I am

Twelfth Night Party

We hosted our first annual (Lord willing) Twelfth Night Party this January.  I left myself lots of room for improvement.  For example next year maybe I will actually have it on the Twelfth Night.  We opted for Epiphany this year.  I thought it was a lot of fun, and I'm glad we got the ball rolling.

We invited a few families over that we thought would be able to roll with the chaos of our first try.  We asked everyone to bring a bottle of wine, a plate of goodies, and their tree if it was still around.  I made Doro Wat, which is an Ethiopian, chicken stew, that is very special in Ethiopia, sort of the equivalent of our turkey dinner.  I thought this would be fun for our family since we have a little Ethiopian heritage, and it is speculated that the magi likely came from Ethiopia.  We built a little fire pit in the back yard to burn the trees on, while we sang The Twelve Days of Christmas.  We have friends that act out the different days while they sing, which I thought would be fun.  We read about the coming of the magi, and how it represents the gospel going out to all the nations.  We wrapped the evening up by singing I Saw Three Ships.

Next  year I would like to invite a group of people that I think will likely make it an annual event.  I will get injera to go with the Doro Wat.  I  need to find an authentic King Cake recipe and decorate it with the appropriate colors.  I also need to find a plastic baby Jesus to put in the cake (after it is cooked).  I think doing a short reading of the story of the magi coming to Jesus.  It would be fun to have a star in lights over the house, this may be bordering on overkill.  I also need to find some fun activities for the younger kids.  Maybe a really simple play for them to perform would be fun.  I also found some really fun crown activities on Pintrest a day too late.

The singing was amazing.  Inviting choir members was a definite bonus.  It was a very fun evening and I think everyone had a good time.  The kids all played well.  Karsten thought there should have been more sledding.  It took us a while to find out who found the bean in the cake.  Martha finally admitted it was her, and she had thrown it away.  We let her wear the crown anyway, although Ethan ended up with it somehow.  For the trial run, it was a success.  I think next year will be even better.

Celebrating Joy

I've been resisting mentioning Valentines Day.  I'm not given to celebrations in general, and greeting card holidays really sort of annoy me.  I think it is vestiges of my past life.  I remember one Valentines Day sometime in the '80s, when friends and I bought a box of chocolates and threw them at the happy couples we saw walking around town.  I was an angry child, and I'm still working that out of my soul.  I was pondering this morning as I scrolled through my news feed on facebook why this is.

I had intended to write about creature comforts when I sat down to my computer.  We had a little exercise in giving up some comforts this weekend.  It is always a good thing to let go of something for a time and see how you react.  I remember when I was packing for Ethiopia last year, thinking about things that I wanted to have with me.  I knew I was going to the land of coffee, so I didn't need to worry for lack in that area.  But I did make sure I had some comfort foods in my bags, all of my bags, just in case.  It seemed silly at the time, and still does.  Why do I find that little bittersweet taste in my mouth in so soothing?  I am sure there are all kinds of scientific studies to explain the brain chemistry.  But why do I, a professing Christian, find comfort in a little sweet taste, when I have the King of Kings as a father?

I realized this weekend how petty my complaints are, and how little I find joy in the blessings all around me.  I can zip happily along until some little bump gets in my way.  I let that little bump grow into a giant mountain of discontent and bitterness.  I start throwing all my complaints and grumbling on the heap, until it ruins my whole day.  I am going to try to take a new path here.  When the bump arises, and it is usually laughably small, I will be thankful for the opportunity to conquer this little sin of mine.  It will remind me to celebrate with joy, all the blessings I was overlooking while zipping along in my comfort zone.  I am going to look for joy.  I know God will give me eyes to see the joy that is everywhere in my life.  It won't happen over night, but I know that I can work in new habits, and that it is God's will for me.

This gets me back to annoyance with Valentine's Day.  I think my scroogyness with celebration is that I can see all the work involved.  I see Valentine's Day as a day to cut up bits of paper and strew them all over my house.  I see pink sprinkles stuck to my carpet and walls.  I see hours of cutting out heart shaped cookies that will be consumed in thirty minutes, (thank you Noel for taking that task off my hands, the kids loved it!).  I need to turn my eyeballs around and see the smiles.  I need to hear the laughter as the sprinkles fly.  I need to ponder the delighted heart that wrote "I love you, Mom.  Happy Valentines Day." on the colored paper hearts that are stuck to my calendar.  I need to look for the joy, and thank God for His gracious love to me.  He loved me in all of my stinginess and anger.  He saved me from that chocolate throwing angry girl that I once was, and made me into His child.  I need to extend that grace to my children, and neighbors through being joyful at the messy celebrations that life brings.  May this Valentines Day be filled with joy and love in each and every one of your homes today.

Christmas

Christmas has rushed by me one more time.  This is a picture of Nesradine helping to decorate the tree.  I held off getting a tree until Dec. 23.  All of the tree lots in town had closed up shop by then.  Fortunately my Dad lives in Christmas tree land, so he brought one with him.  Martha had spent a week with friends from Ethiopia, and I wanted her to be here to put on the ornaments.  As it turned out she was exhausted from a very busy week and a long drive.  Rick was out getting a birthday gift for me.  And I was coming down with the flu.  It was not quite the Burl Ives moment I was imagining.  It ended with at least two children in tears, and me in bed at 8:30.

I pretty much crawled into bed and called it a day for the next 5 days.  My Dad took over the kitchen.  Rick was on child management, and decoration completion.  They did a fine job.  I was most worried about Martha being disappointed.  She wasn't.  She got the doll house that she had been wanting.  She was pleased to not get any books.  And she thought the food was just fine, especially the fudge.  It was not at all what I had planned.  I didn't make it to church on Christmas Eve.  My family had a wonderful dinner with our dear friends Greg and Michele.  I didn't make it to church on Sunday either.  In the end, it was just the way God planned it, and really I can't complain.

I learned that my children are capable of doing the things that they love without my help.  They enjoyed exchanging the gifts that they had picked out and purchased themselves.  They really didn't care if the gifts were wrapped, although some of my kids really like to wrap and they got to.  The tree was a joy, no matter when it gets put up.  I did lose a few ornaments between my dog, and the lack of proper training on how to get the ornament well attached to the tree.  The kids didn't really care though, they thought it was lovely.  I did try to plan some activities to keep the celebration going for the twelve days of Christmas.  They enjoyed spending a day at the pool.  The enjoyed going to Grandpa's house.  They told me that it didn't matter if we were at our house or Grandpa's as long as he was with them, it felt like Christmas.  I also learned that Grandpa can make pies, no matter what he tries to tell me.  And he needs to use his recipe.  Most importantly I learned that my expectations do not make the holidays better.  If it doesn't measure up to my standard, the kids still love it.  They love to be with their friends and family.  They love to eat turkey and mashed potatoes.  As long as there are grandparents and fudge Christmas will always be a hit.

I'm not sure we did a great job emphasizing the incarnation of Christ in our celebration.  We did our advent readings, and sang a lot of carols.  I had considered putting some of our gifts in a friend's manager and hiking out there on Christmas to remember that Jesus did not come into the cozy world that we inhabit.  I guess this wasn't the year for that, but I still think it has some merit.  I think next year I would like to limit the gifts to a couple of very special things.  I think the kids are ready for that.  They really didn't have a lot of wants this year.  Partly because they are blessed beyond measure, and partly because they prefer to do things instead of have things.  I think next year we will spend more time thinking about what to give to others.  I would like to work in more time reflecting on the wonder of the season.  Rick read the poem, The Night Before Christmas.  I had forgotten what a wonderful poem that is.  I'll have to find more poetry for the season.

This morning I was having coffee with a couple of friends.  I asked them what they did in their homes to help keep the house from feeling so empty after Christmas.  One friend described it as post partum Christmas.  Even Martha asked me today "What now?"  I'm trying to think of things to put around the house to cheer up the late winter lull before Easter season starts.  Ideas would be much appreciated.