Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [88]
given a trust must prove faithful.
1 Corinthians 4:2
April 12, 2009
Easter is here whether I am ready or not. By the time I push the button to post this blog, it will be officially past midnight and it will be Easter Sunday.
This year, I didn’t do the official Easter shopping outing where the little girls get new dresses, nor did any of the eggs get colored (plastic will do this year, right?). For that matter, the official Chapman Easter baskets were left in the attic and I didn’t make it to the store to buy the Easter candy.
Easter just kind of snuck up on me. I knew it was coming, but somehow I thought if I didn’t look, it would go right on by without much pain. I think I was mistaken.
Definitely a different Easter. All of us Chapmans spread out and not together. It is mostly different, though, because of one little squinty-eyed girl who made this family complete with her belly giggle and her infectious personality . . . truly a silly, silly goober!
She is painfully missed, and the hole that is left in her absence is one that is the shape of her and her alone. No one else can fill the empty place that Maria left. While I’ve been reflecting on that, however, I began to think again of Easter and what all it represents.
Until now, Christmas has always been my favorite holiday to celebrate. Why wouldn’t it be? Presents to each other, and Christ as a baby – the present to the world so that we could be saved! A beautiful holiday filled with so much joy, expectation, and celebration. Everything we celebrate at Christmas is really in the form of a present, nicely wrapped with a beautiful bow . . . but without Easter, Christmas would be just another day.
Easter has been “colored up” to be a pretty day filled with baskets, candy, gifts, and eggs. But Easter is messy. Easter is the cross. Easter meant suffering. No Christmas without the cross. I hope we as Christians never forget what that symbol of the cross truly means. We have a Savior who put Himself in human form as an infant, fully knowing what the cost would be on the day we celebrate as Easter.
I am thankful in a special way this year.
The suffering of Jesus is comforting to me when I think about Easter without Maria. But even more comforting is that Jesus rose from the dead, walked out of the tomb. People saw Him and touched Him. They knew it was Him, they knew His voice, they touched His scars.
How exciting it is for me to grasp that the risen Lord could be touched, heard, and recognized. Jesus ascended into heaven like that, which tells me that I will see Maria again. I will touch and hug my little cuddle bug in the most physical sense.
I have that hope, not just because of Christmas, but because of what was accomplished on the cross! It is hard to live in this reality most days. It has been hard beyond what I thought I could ever withstand. However, the work on the cross that was done on my behalf, on your behalf, is what I have to hold onto. It has to be what causes me to take steps forward in this life.
Sometimes it is ten steps forward and five steps back, and sometimes it is one step forward and twenty steps back, but I’m moving . . . slowly but surely with my eyes on the prize. Eternity with Christ and a reunion with a chubby little girl that I didn’t get near enough hugs and kisses from this side of the veil.
April 23, 2009
Now I find myself sitting in my home all by myself, all dressed up, waiting on my ride to the Grand Ole Opry House where the 40th annual Dove Awards will be. I am excited to be going with my hubby of twenty-four years and am so proud of how he has walked our journey out these last eleven months. He has been so broken but open and humble before God and his family.
The way he has led us through this darkest of valleys has been inspiring to me. I would not be where I am in my grief journey without Steven being right there to catch me when I fall. In my humble opinion, he is husband and father of the year. When the absolute toughest of situations was given to our family to navigate through, God totally knew that Steven