Author: marettej

 Oh it was a fun time. It always is. We know Jesus rose from the dead so we don’t mind celebrating Easter on Saturday. It has been a tradition of our family for many years now. We gather not on Thanksgiving or Christmas, as those holidays are busy with extended family- we hold out and have a party on Easter Saturday. It’s some of the same tradition and some new. Like, we have games and pizza usually on Friday night for whoever is there early. Saturday morning we show up. This year we had a brunch. Some years it’s an all out Easter dinner with ham, potatoes and green beans. After lunch we have the egg hunt for the kids. You do age out, so the young ones totally enjoy until they are too old. You have a colored basket and you only pick up those color of eggs. This year we had two stints since some kids had to leave early. Then we have the candy bar hunt for the old folks, and the kids who aged out of the egg hunt. This year because of the ridiculous rain in Indiana, we let that tradition die also lest we all get soggy candy.  The tradition that never changes is the Resurrection Egg carton that comes out. The eggs and the papers are passed around and one by one the grandkids take turns reading and telling the story.  The innocence of children is priceless. From mispronounced words to the one opening the egg (the one with the piece of rope that was to resemble the whip) and declared it’s a broken hair band which brought all hysterical giggles out. Once we composed ourselves we kept on going. It seem so easy for us to recognize the things that we know are coming. But to Adian, it did look like a broken hair band. I couldn’t agree more.

We aren’t the only one to mistake something for what it isn’t. I think about Mary coming to the tomb. Her mind was filled with lots of questions, fears, tears and probably she didn’t get much sleep since Friday night.  She couldn’t wait. She had to come to see the tomb. The Sabbath laws would have probably kept her from coming on Saturday. Sunday morning she was not to be denied. You know how you think, or perhaps don’t think, when you haven’t slept well. Simple little things just kind of go right over your head. So Mary, we are giving her the benefit of the doubt. But thinking about it I’m not sure I would have recognized Jesus. Just as Adian wasn’t sure about the rope cuz it did look like a hair band, Mary probably saw the person there and made some automatic assumptions. We make assumptions well. Person in garden, people tend the gardens, mind a bit foggy from lack of sleep and a troubled heart; I can see how she would mistake Jesus for a gardener. And when I am crying, I don’t see well and  I don’t probably listen well either.

“John 20: 11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. 15He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 16Jesus said to her, “Mary.” “

We all have those “Thinking he was a gardener” moments in life. Jesus is right there and we just miss him. We in our fears and struggles look right past Jesus and see a gardener. It’s those times that Jesus just stands there. We make our speeches. We usually have our speeches all written out just waiting to give. Jesus, just stands there  waiting  for us to finish and then says our name.

I just need to remember that Jesus is standing waiting as I stumble through the “Thinking he was a gardener” moments and ready to call my name when I get done with my weeping and my dumb questions.  Jesus is always there; sometimes it does look like he is someone else, but that’s just probably more in my eyes than in my heart.  He’s just waiting for me to see Him for who He really is. Risen!

Another one of those texts came today that kind of shook my little world.   It’s exactly that- my world is quite little. I have flown over the world and looked down and can’t see anything or anyone except white clouds and perhaps some blue color that is supposed to be the ocean. When they tell me to make sure I understand how to pull my cushion of my seat out so I can use it for a floatation device, I kind of tune them out. If we are going down in water, I am not worried about floating. I will be fish bait. The world I live in looks pretty small from up there. So when something happens in my world, I realize that it’s my little world that gets shaken.  The text was rather expected just not today.  The text reminded me that life is short and we are only here for a little while.

I totally loved this women. I remember her from way back when I was a kid. Her son was in my class, and so I knew her as Kevin’s mom, but in later years she had become a good friend. We were in  a small group with another son of hers and got to be very close. Through cancer, and walking Randy home, Ramona got to be a special friend.  Her quiet unassuming spirit was a bit different than mine. She always had a kind word, a spirit of Jesus serving others and I enjoyed talking with and being with her.
Probably one of the special moments were when I mailed her a card. I would send her cards on her son’s birthday after Randy went home to be with the Lord. You bury your parents, not your children. He was young, in his 30’s and with four kids. You bury old people; it’s just so unnatural to bury the young. I sent her valentines, cards of remembering and although I knew it was special, when she would thank me, I knew it was more than just thanks; it was from the heart.

Tonight at Cowboy Church I sang a song dedicated to her, ” Just inside the Pearly Gates”. It’s times like this, and there have been way too many this year, that the tears come and begin running down the cheeks, (I say the eyes spring a leak) and singing is a challenge. , In my hearts imagination,  I can see her hugging her big lug of a son and Haven, her husband throwing his arms around her tiny little frame. Well, we don’t know what we will look like, so I just pretend they will be what I am thinking at the moment.   The song begins, “I will meet you in the morning, just inside the Pearly gates” . That’s a promise I made as I sang that song. A promise that I will be faithful. It probably won’t be Ramona I search for first in heaven, as I have a son and several other babies waiting for me. But it’s the Ramona’s in life that kept me focused on what’s important.  And as I grow up, or rather age, I pray that somewhere along the line, I can be a Ramona to someone else.

It’s an odd saying we say, “rest in peace”. I don’t know it’s history but I know what I understand it to mean. Ramona was always working and always serving. Now is her time to rest at Jesus feet and just smile. And smile, she could and did do a lot of.

It bothers me when people ask questions they really don’t want to know the answers to. So don’t stop and say to me, “How are you” when you really don’t want to know.  And don’t tell me, “Whatever you want to do” when you know that you don’t really want to do what I want to do.  So we go through life with the “Don’t ask I won’t tell” mind-set. What if, we just all said what was honestly the way it was and avoid the conflict when we all know we didn’t mean it in the first place? Did I lose you anywhere along that little rant?

I sit looking up at the paddle. It started out by me asking if she would paint our cabin on an old canoe paddle. She said no, she gave up painting. We chit chatted a bit and then went on our way. It wasn’t more than a month or two when she called me and told me to drop off the paddle with her brother and a picture and they would bring her the paddle and she would paint the picture. I gave it to Jim for his birthday. He probably didn’t care but I did. It was a canoe paddle from my childhood. It had meaning.

Why did Mary change her mind? I have no clue. She has passed on so I will never know. I am very thankful she did.

We all have a “change of mind ” moment. No is such an easy word. It has become my word of choice this year. Once you do or say you will do, people expect. When you say no and then do, it’s a wonderful surprise. There is a Bible parable about the one who said yes and never did and the one who said no and changes their mind and did. I have been both.

As I sit and look at the paddle hanging in the kitchen of the cabin I see lots of things that have changed. We built on to the cabin, we painted the cabin, the ugly shutters are gone (they gave ugly a new meaning” and the trees in front have been cut down. What hasn’t changed is the love for the place, the love for what it represents and the love for the women who painted the canoe paddle; the one who changed her mind. May I strive to be the mind changer in people’s lives and not the disappointed who says yes and then does nothing.

Especially this year, when the daffodils bloom we will enjoy their beauty. I enjoy them every year but for reasons perhaps not always embraced by the heart. Today I will go and buy a bunch, or a plant or both. Today is one of those memory dates that one never forgets. When the kids were little, we had a party with cake and sometimes balloons. When Addlea was little she would release the balloons so her baby brother had something to play with in heaven. I guess she thought God hadn’t thought about toys for tots. March 23 many years ago we held our son as he died. We knew he may not be born alive or live for any amount of time after he was born, so being born alive was an awesome experience. It’s kind of odd to say that, but for us it was a huge answer to prayer. I simply asked God to give us something to love and he gave me a beautiful angel to hold for a couple hours before taking him back to heaven. Our second child was developing without bladder and kidneys which then affected how everything else in his body grew. They called it Potters Sequence: we learned way more than we wanted to know.

So March 23, though an awkward day in some ways has become a joy. Partially because it’s not my choice to give life or take life; that’s totally Gods. For me it would be arrogant to think that I should get all the wonderful things in life without needing an umbrella for a few rainy days. How self centered of me to think that God would only give me what I want: I never did that for my children so why would God treat me any different? God allowed me 8 months to carry a being and be “Jesus” to someone we would never get to know. To love, to protect, to sing to, to talk about and then to hand back; those things are simply pulling the wagon that God placed the handle in my hand. And interestingly enough, when God gives you a wagon to pull, he also gives you the strength to pull it and the wisdom to know where to pull it to.

I learned a few lessons that I still remember 27 years later. I can’t find my phone, can’t remember where my wallet is or where I hid the gift I bought someone so they wouldn’t see it, but this I will never forget. And when I see daffodils, it brings it a back, in a really neat way. My sister sent my daffodils when Normi was born and died. I planted them the next year and every year I plant more. I am not much of a gardener so perennials are the plants that have a chance to live in my world. Every year, depending on the winter, I get to relive a blessing. When I see the beauty of daffodils, I may shed a tear, but I see so much more. Daffodils are God reminding me words he put in my heart standing in the elevator at Methodist Hospital that changed how I thought of God and radically changed my faith walk forever.

I have been able to sit and talk to young moms who are walking where I walked. At those points of time, they think they can’t imagine going on. I did. I went on. I pulled the wagon. For them, although the circumstances are never the same, I looked normal and was living life. ( Please no comments about the normal part). For a heartbroken young mom, knowing someone else got through those trying times is a big part of moving on. And please don’t ever tell anyone you know what they are going through, because you don’t. Every circumstance is unique as us people who walk through them dragging our wagons through the mud.

So today I will decorate the house with the beauty of the daffodils. Baihley has already figured out how she and Hannah will make a cake. We will make the crazy 7 minute frosting, and lick the bowl and enjoy it; every bite! I will celebrate the ways God walked me through the mud, cleaned off the dried mud on my wagon wheels and kept my focus on what He did rather what what I lost. And I didn’t really lose anything. We say that, ” I lost a child”, or ” I lost my mother”; they aren’t lost. God has them right where they are supposed to be. We are just not in the right place to find them.

The sun is out and it’s a beautiful day here in Minnesota. For us, that’s the end of a really hard, cold, snowy winter. People are smiling. Snow is melting. Daffodils will begin pushing their heads out of the cold ground. And when they do, I will have the chance all over again to tell God how thankful I am for the chance to be right where He placed me so many years ago. And the daffodils, they are just beautiful.