Easter Joy

Well you can't very well write about Good Friday and not write about Easter! I spent the weekend with a good friend in Binghamton, so am just getting around to writing a bit tonight.

On my drive back from Binghamton, this prayer entered my heart: "Lord, let me see myself in the Light of Your Resurrection." Our ideas about our lives and our very personhood are too often determined by others, when the only Person who can speak who we are is God. A God who knows the realities of human existence, but who offers the final Word - LIFE. There is joy, humility and peace here. The joy of knowing that humanity is resurrected in Christ, and that by His stripes, I am healed. 

I went to Easter Sunday Mass at my friend's church, and although I knew no one else besides my friend, I felt totally at home and welcomed. People had friendly faces and friendly spirits (oh that it were so in every Catholic parish!). But it soon became clear that we chose to sit near a family with a toddler who was NOT having it. "I want down. I want get down!" the little guy wailed and squirmed in his grandfather's arms, almost to the point where he squirmed right out of his little pants. 

Yeah it was annoying because I had to work really hard to focus on the homily. But I also felt like I understood that kid really well. Like, sometimes I just want to wail and squirm out of the arms of the Lord when He's asking me to do something I don't like or don't get. Sometimes he's just asking me to be still and rest in Him. Okay, most of the time that's what He's asking me! He only holds me in love, but when I fight Him, I make it harder for myself (and often for others around me).

My prayer for the Easter Season and the coming year is for all of us to allow Him to hold us and not to wail and squirm and demand to do life our own way. God is the only one who knows us perfectly, and He's the only one who can speak who we are. But we have to let Him.