It’s 10:05 on a Sunday morning. I’m sick with a miserable cold and staying home from church, but my husband was going to take the boys. This, however, is South Dakota. And in the last twelve hours we’ve had several inches of wet, heavy snow dumped on us. Here in town it isn’t too bad, our street isn’t plowed but it would be drivable…but first the drifts in the driveway need to be cleared. And so my husband headed out with the snowblower. And stayed out. It’s now 10:10 on a Sunday morning and he still needs to shower before leaving for church at 10:30.

I don’t think he’s going to make it. He didn’t stop with just clearing our driveway and sidewalk. First one neighbor, and then another, and then another. He uses our snowblower to help out those without one, unconcerned with the passing of time. At first I fret…”Doesn’t he know he’s going to miss church?” And then I stop. He’s missing church but quietly doing Kingdom work. Most of our neighbors don’t attend church. We’ve never had spiritual conversations with them, but I know they see us heading off or coming home from church, Bibles in hand. Today my husband is being that quiet witness to them that church isn’t just about getting together in our little club to worship God, he is willing to give that up to help out someone who needs it.

It’s 10:18 on a Sunday morning; I don’t think my family will be at church today. But I think that God is smiling.

This post is written as part of the blog carnival hosted by Angela at Becoming Me. Check out the link to find more great reflections from other bloggers on what Easter means to them.

Easter has often been a rocky time for me. It was something we celebrated and I could quote you book, chapter and verse on why we celebrated Easter but I couldn’t have ever really said that I felt like celebrating Easter. Sacrilege, I know, a good Christian girl not wanting to celebrate Easter. But there you have it. Easter was one of those days where I felt left out.

When I was younger I felt left out because all my friends got Easter baskets full of chocolate rabbits and jelly bean eggs, most of the time we only got something if my dad’s employer handed out candy. As I got older I felt left out because I never seemed to get the pretty new Easter dresses that other girls got. Older still, and I began to feel left out because despite a world of head knowledge about the resurrection, despite baptism, despite Christian schooling, despite a professed faith I just didn’t ‘feel’ Easter. Wasn’t there supposed to be joy? “Lift your glad voices,” and so forth? If I couldn’t feel the joy of Easter, was I even any good as a Christian? It’s taken me most of a lifetime to realize that I first had to surrender at the foot of the cross in order to understand the glory of the resurrection.

Looking back now it seems pretty clear that even in my teenage years I was already struggling with depression and anxiety, and Easter coming at the end of a cold winter, more often than not being cold and wet when it arrived was not going to imbue me with warm and happy feelings just by showing up on the calendar. But my lack of joy and my inability to feel what I thought a good Christian ought to feel only added to the frustration, only fed my depression more. “Why can’t I get this right?” I would think. At the darkest moments I questioned whether life was even worth living if I couldn’t get this one simple thing right.

College came, and during those years I began to gain a better understanding of the grace and love of Christ. In the following years there were some beautiful Easter experiences. Sitting alone at the top of a hill on campus watching the sun rise over the mountains. Joining with my church for a sunrise service on a hillside overlooking rolling hills and farmland. Many years, though, Easter has just marked another date on the calendar.

Last year my frustration again came to a head. It was a difficult time, struggling once again with depression, struggling with my identity as a new stay at home mom; once again, I just wasn’t ‘feeling’ Easter. In the days and weeks that followed though I began to learn something. Easter doesn’t begin with the happy feel-good celebrations. Easter really begins at the foot of the cross, and until I begin to throw myself daily at the foot of that cross and the wonder of the sacrifice that Christ made on it, Easter will remain nothing more than a pretty pastel holiday. It’s the sacrifice that covers my sins. It’s the love involved that allows me to trust Him to carry my burdens. Easter is the assurance that Christ has conquered death, it is my future hope of eternal life.

I’ve learned something else as well. Feelings are fickle, subject to chemistry, the weather, what I had for dinner last night. Easter was never meant to be a feeling, it is a fact. I can celebrate the fact that Christ is risen even when I’m at my lowest points. I’m not celebrating the warm and fuzzy peeps and chocolate bunnies wrapped in pastel ribbons Easter. I’m celebrating the power of the stone rolled away, the empty tomb, the risen Lord appearing to his followers. I don’t have to feel anything to begin to celebrate that, I just need to bow in reverence and from the depths of my heart say, “Thank you.” And joy will follow.

 

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:31 NIV)

Sometimes I find it easy to get caught up with only seeing the brokenness of this world we live in. The cities filled with concrete where car exhaust chokes the air, the barrenness of famine stricken lands and the hollow eyes of malnourished children, riots, rubble in bombed out neighborhoods a world away from my quiet street. I wonder, what happened to this very good world that God created?

Sin happened, and sin brought consequences. But I don’t think it changes the fact that everything God created is still very good. I need to be still, to look at the world and its people with different eyes. Wherever we go, whatever we see, when we look beyond the shattered shells we see the loveliness that God intended.

When I listen to the song ‘Lovely’ by Michelle Tumes I think not only of the things that are obviously beautiful, I also think of the hidden beauty, the kind that takes time to see. Flowers growing through the rubble, smiles on scarred faces, hands reaching out to give and to help. This world is broken, but the kingdom of God is still breaking through, and where it does there is beauty.

For more Then Sings My Soul Saturday visit Amy at Signs, Miracles and Wonders.

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Today’s post is inspired by the fact that this weekend is week two of a hometown tradition in the town my husband grew up in. Every year the local Christian school hosts a fund-raising effort called Schmeckfest. The translation is something like ‘festival of tasting’ so, of course, food is one of the main events. This has been going on for 50 years now and just keeps getting bigger. There are exhibits and booths at which you can sample and buy traditional German-Russian foods most of which I will not attempt to spell. There is sausage, both smoked and regular, you can watch them make it right there. Peppernuts, which are tiny little hard cookies traditionally spiced with anise seed, although you can now get them in many different flavors (my favorite being butter brickle). Then there are rosettes, those delicious greasy deep fried flowers of batter dusted with powdered sugar. And a bake sale table array of various desserts.

After all this tasting you can also sit down to a traditional German meal served at long tables in the high school cafeteria by a team of volunteer servers and cleaners (my husband is a table clearer tonight) who operate with drill-team like precision to serve at least a thousand people a night. There are two types of soup, bean and…something else. Sausage, of course. Stewed beef. Cheese buttons, which sound more interesting than they really are. Pluma moos, which I recommend passing on, and kuchen, of which I recommend eating as much as you possibly can. None of these are traditional foods from my childhood, but for many people they are nostalgia wrapped up in a hefty dose of calories.

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This, of course, got me thinking about the traditional foods of my childhood. Shoo-fly pie (seriously, pass, it’s dry and not that good). Trail bologna and Swiss cheese platters at every potluck (bears no resemblance to the bland slices of store-bought bologna nor have I ever found comparable Swiss cheese in any store). Pork and sauerkraut for New Year’s, cooked in the slow cooker with brown sugar and apple slices.

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Clearly I don’t remember that many traditional foods. But then there were the family staples. Liver and onions. I’m actually one of the few people I know who actually liked that as a child, although now I don’t think I could begin to eat it, much less prepare it. Beef tongue sandwiches. Again, I liked it as a child, now I’m thinking “I ate a cow’s TONGUE!” Just thinking of the texture now gives me shivers. Chicken livers in gravy. Are you detecting a theme here? I drew the line when my mom served us calf brains. I will go to my grave never knowing what those taste like, and not feeling that I’ve missed out in the least.

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When you bring two people with different food traditions together as a couple there are bound to be some missteps and some compromises. One day while I was still a student my husband offered to cook supper. Orange chicken and rice. I, of course, was picturing the Chinese version of this dish and spent the day anticipating it. Imagine my surprise to find that orange chicken in HIS family was rice and chicken baked with a can of tomato soup and a can of cream of mushroom soup. I make it for him on occasion because I love him, but my level of love for this dish is pretty low.

And then there was the time we tried to make his beloved cheese pockets. (Also known as vareniky and some other name I can’t remember.) Cheese pockets are little fried turnovers filled with dry curd cottage cheese and I think some chopped onions, typically served with ham gravy. Different communities in the Midwest have their own variation, some boil and then cook them on a griddle. I will confess I do dearly love their deep fried goodness. At any rate, it is one thing to make them in the Midwest, where stores sell dry curd cottage cheese, another entirely to make them in Virginia where you have to try to drain regular cottage cheese. Partway into our messy, unsuccessful attempt and one of our first marital blow-ups we decided that family harmony was more important than tradition, threw it all in the trash and ordered pizza instead. Now we rely on his mother to make them.

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Of course, one of the joys of being an adult faced with the responsibility of feeding a family is the ability to shape your own view of eating and attempt to mold new food traditions. I find myself looking more and more at the health aspects of the foods that we eat, as well as the environmental impact. This is leading me towards less processed foods, growing my own garden, and trying to lean more on a vegetable/whole grain based diet. I’m continually learning new things that have me reevaluating what we eat. Currently I’m reconsidering our consumption of pork (this will be a revelation to my husband). As I look into the WHY of God declaring it an unclean meat I’m stunned by the information I’m coming across regarding pork and health. I’m still struggling with whether or not as a Christian we are supposed to be trying to follow Torah, but the health impact alone is worth a trial run of giving up pork. (Um, so no Schmeckfest sausage this year…)

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Of course, the main problem in shaping a family’s food philosophy is convincing the rest of the family that it is for the best. Sometimes you let them make their own decisions (I’m looking at your Diet Coke, my dear). But when those people are your children it’s not so much their decision because left to their own devices they would probably eat nothing but cookies, pizza and chicken nuggets. I used to believe that it was completely within my control as to whether my children would be picky eaters or not. After following the same tactics with two children and getting two different results I have modified my views substantially. Left long enough, Indy will often at least taste a new food on his plate, and will quite frequently like it enough to eat several bites. Gates will not try a new food until he is ready in his own mind to do so. That old saying “They’ll eat if they are hungry?” He would starve first. This week was a good one, he actually tried two new foods, sloppy joe sauce and lasagna. He would not eat the potatoes I oven baked to look like french fries. It’s a growth process.

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Now that I’ve rambled on far beyond the definition of ‘quick’ takes, it is time to go do the grocery shopping. One of my least favorite tasks when I have to make several stops as I do today. Made less so because Indy will be along and we all know what shopping with a four year old is like.

 

For more Quick Takes visit Jen at Conversion Diary!