easter...one year later

Easter has come and gone. We had a good time on Saturday having a breakfast with church members and friends, followed by an egg hunt. I did Easter baskets on Saturday too so that we could spend Sunday focusing on the spiritual side of the holiday. Didn't have any invites for Easter dinner, so the boys and I just spent it here at home---ate homemade waffles picnic-style. watched that perennial Easter favorite "Elf", and enjoyed one another's company and laughter.

As peaceful as it all was, Easter was bittersweet for me too. It was the last holiday I needed to spend to complete the one year cycle since my separation/divorce.

Last Easter was horrible. Awful. I can't even tell you the dark place I was in. I was walking numb. If you look back at my blog post from last Easter--you'll see us coloring eggs and doing Easter-y things. I was trying so hard to just write things normal. In reality, my husband had left. I had no idea where he was at or if he was coming home. All I had was an email full of confessions. I was terrified and heart sick and so very, very confused. And yet I had four boys who thought their dad was just gone out of town for business, who simply wanted to "have Easter". I look back at that day now--that whole chain of days in March and April in fact--and wonder how I did it. I had no choice obviously. I had no one else to step in and do it for me. And yet I cannot deny that the main source of a strength beyond my own came from THE Source.

I so badly at that time wanted the Lord to calm the storm raging around me. To miraculously make everything right and whole again. He chose not to. But he did, little by little, and with a surety, calm the storm within me. Some might reason that everyone--believers or not--will come to feel better about a situation with time. But I testify that were it not for my faith, I would not have lived through that period in my life. The pain was too great. I was carried and you can never persuade me otherwise.

My friend told me once that divorced people are like seeing a man with an eye patch. The patch adds a sense of dashing mystery to the man's appearance, but the fact still is--the man has been through a maiming experience.

So....I guess I'm the lady with the eye patch. But I'm a thankful lady. And a happy lady. And a funny lady who has probably sewn something nonsensically silly like "Frankie Say Relax" onto said eye patch. I am a mother. And a friend. And a sister. And a daughter of my Heavenly Father.

And so I give such thanks for the simple Easter that it was this year. I give thanks for just watching my boys inspect their baskets and be excited for every little dollar store treat they pulled out of them. I give thanks for syrup-sticky fingers. I give thanks for scraps of foil candy wrappers on my floor. I give thanks for the fact that I wake up in the morning and think about "mom things" again instead of how jumbled my life has become. I can now add to this repertoire of gratitude: not having to think "this time last year we were together...." and all the raw emotions that thought always managed to scrape up. I am thankful-- truly, truly thankful that I am still alive.

And that I am 365 days wiser.

Hope your Easter filled you with gratitude as well.