I didn't like Easter this year

Indeed

I didn’t like Easter this year.

I woke up and put on my pastel purple shirt then quickly realized it is A LOT tighter than it was a year ago. So I threw my vest on over top because I’m a dad-in-training.

But that’s not why I didn’t like Easter.

I walked out into my garage and saw the leftover mess from my failed attempt to change the oxygen sensor on my 4Runner. The rust has just been there too long, I can’t get the bolt off.

But that’s not why I didn’t like Easter.

Sometimes I feel like I should raise my hands in church but it just seems weird. Maybe there was a Presbyterian minister in my family somewhere in the past and standing frozen during music is just in our genes now. So when someone around me is really getting into their feels and swinging their hands around like the Vols just beat Alabama again, I get distracted or annoyed (but really I’m just feeling less than).

But that’s not why I didn’t like Easter.

I work at a church as a videographer but this morning I couldn’t find the lens I needed or my name tag that allows me to get around the building. And this meant I missed getting the nice footage of all the people greeting each other in the lobby with smiles and “He is risen. He is risen, indeed.”

But that’s not why I didn’t like Easter.

No, I didn’t like Easter because the sermon was all about how we can’t get to Sunday without going through Friday. We can’t greet the morning with joy if we don’t sit with the evening in tears. If you read the Gospels straight through, you get to the cross before you get to the empty tomb.

I don’t like that.

Some of that is from a childhood of believing that the plot of the Left Behind books is about to really happen and feeling like “they” could be coming for me any day. “Will you deny him? Will you stand up for Jesus? Will you burn your Harry Potter books?”

I’ve come a long way from that, but I still feel in my bones sometimes that anything I love could be taken away in an instant.

No I don’t like that. I just want the Easter Sunday goodies, you know: the life, hope, joy and resurrection stuff.

Because I love stories with “happily ever after” at the end. The older I get, the less I find them believable but part of me still feels like a kid again when I close a book or walk out of a theater.

I’m glad it’s still there. I think it’s the part of me that still believes stories like that are real. True love does really win in the end, the boy gets the girl, everyone gets to be together laughing over a feast.

I remind myself of this on the days where I feel like anything I love can be taken away. I remember that a small part of me wants such stories to be true.

And if that isn’t Easter.

For once in this not-in-the-least-bit-God-forsaken world, something good happened, really happened.

And if I weren’t so afraid, it wouldn’t be so beautiful to find hope again. If I hadn’t lost people, I wouldn’t know the longing for the day I will get them back. If the old part of me doesn’t die, I wouldn’t have wept at the beauty of thinking to myself “You know, it was all worth it.”

Maybe my shirts don’t fit like they used to. Maybe my old beliefs are rusted to the bolts and are tough to loosen. Maybe my hands are in my pockets. But then I remember, whatever else happens, today we celebrate something really good actually happening.

I didn’t like Easter this year, I loved it.

He is risen.

He is risen, indeed.