This was the view outside my window this morning.
I needed this view.
On the very weekend that I wanted to soak up the incredible gift of hope and life, I spent most of the weekend wallowing in a selfish pity-party. It snowed on Friday and Saturday. At this time of year, I find myself loathing the snow.
I want to be positive and thankful, but in my real life, I'm a weepy mess of a woman who wants nothing more than to move back to sunny CA, pack a picnic lunch, throw all six treasures in the car with their bathing suits on and head to the beach.
Spring in this place does me in more than winter does me in.
Yesterday the kids spent the ENTIRE day building tents all over the farmhouse and played till their hearts content. The Cowboy was gone for the day and every few minutes I found myself getting all bunchy inside, feeling stuck and mad and trying to reconcile the glory of Easter with how I really felt about my life.
On Saturday night when the Cowboy got home we pulled out the Jesus Storybook Bible and gathered the kids in the living room. We read the story about the night Jesus died. We read about the struggle going on in His heart and the agonizing conversation He had with His Papa. The kids listened intently as I wept through the whole story. We prayed together then went to bed.
And then a new morning came and the word REDEEMED sat boldly on the shelf in my living room and I looked out the window and His glory was covering the sky in the most vibrant, hope-declaring colors.
And that's when I remembered__
It's my desperate need for Jesus that makes Easter so incredibly glorious__
It's not my ability to pull off the perfect life and impress my man, my children, my neighbors and myself with my self-sufficient abilities to always be happy.
By golly I NEED JESUS, and this weekend I was so brutally aware of it!
{The bottom picture makes me laugh.}
This year it was just us and the kids and my dad and Lori.
There was no Easter Egg Hunt, no Easter decorations, nothing fancy at all.
There was a service at our little Cowboy church where our pastor poured out his heart and told of his Jesus and all that He had done for us because of His great love for us.
There was a simple meal around the farmhouse table, good conversation and laughter, followed by rest.
Easter wasn't what I thought it should be this year__or maybe it wasn't what the world has convinced me it should be.
Instead it was a tangible reminder of what it was always meant to be__ a season for the soul to ponder and cling to the mystery and the glory of the Son of God dying and rising from the dead so that we could be made new__ so that we could be perfectly loved in the thick of our mess.
{When it snows, the kids and I pile in Mama and Papa's bed, read books, make faces at each other, you know, stuff like that.}
{Love this face. Every Sunday we have a "testimony time" in church. This morning this awesome kid shared about our trip to Mount Rush-a-more. I never wanna forget how he says Rushmore with a pronounced "a" in the middle. And I never wanna forget how pumped he was about spending a weekend in a cabin in South Dakota with his family.}
{The kids found a strange looking egg this morning that not only had an odd shape, but also felt like rubber. Weird.}
{This might be one of my all-time favorite pictures. Three sisters in church. You can barely see her, but Miss Shiloh is buried in her sister's chest__one of her favorite places to be.}
{My Spunky Girl has fallin in love with reading. I kept finding her in the sunshine with a book.}
{I can't get over the fact that this guy is gonna be 11 years old in a few short weeks.}
{The kids got $5 bills from some of the grandparents. The Charmer was convinced that he's officially rich.}
{Such a Spunky Girl face}
When I tucked the kids into bed last night, the Dancing Girl looked at me and said, "You know Mama, it's not about the eggs, it's about Jesus." I smiled so big and hugged that girl close.
How thankful I am for Jesus, His willingness to die for me, His power that raised Him from the dead, and His wild love for me and my beautiful-mess of a crew.
