Just now my husband came down the stairs from giving the big boys a bath and said,
"Hannah."
With a big grin on his face he recounted how he had absentmindedly been singing the words,
"Ain't nothin' but a hoochie mama, hood rat, hood rat, hoochie mama."
I can picture him up there, just beating out the words in his head, bobbing his head in woodpecker-like fashion, his lower lip jutting out the way it always is when he's rapping.
Josh continued to explain how Jonathan was paying attention, as he usually is, and only moments later was singing the tune as well. At that point William apparently had had enough, and exclaimed,
"Stop saying that! That is MY mama, do not call her HOOCHIE mama!"
Oh my heart melted. First of all, my three year old has no idea the significance of what he was defending in my character, and secondly, he just wants me to be me and nothing else. The sweet loving innocence of that vivacious little boy sits on my heart like a backup battery of joy.
Right, so you're wondering what this family anecdote has to do with Easter. Nothing!... and everything.
Jesus died on the cross, and then three days later he rose from the grave. It was a miracle, it was the final and lasting proof that he, the man, was and is God in the flesh, and it was the sacrifice and resurrection we require for eternal life in Him.
Sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for heaven, and in a lot of ways (and on a lot of bad days) I am. I look forward to that promise of eternal relief from sorrow and sickness and pain like dessert at the end of a five-year-old's dinner. It's the reason I'm in this, it's the ice cream sundae at the end of the long hot summer day, it's the vodka in my tonic.
On those days, however, I am forgetting the promise of Easter. Jesus came that we might have life, life to the full, but here and now, not just in the hereafter. This life is bursting with the promise of heaven, and sometimes it takes the simplest things to remind me.
When my husband told me the little story about our boys, how they mimicked him and laughed, defended me and loved me, my gut reaction was not joy-- it was greed. I wanted to go back in time and video record it. I wanted to lock that moment in a drawer and keep it for days to come, so that I can one day unlock that moment and relive it. My knee jerk desire was to bottle that joy, innocence, and love.
I love the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, which was my Easter inspired blog last year, because of Jesus's human-ness alongside his miracle work. He wept, and why? Why would he weep over a dead friend he was about to raise? I believe he wept because he lived in the moment, and that moment was bigger for him BECAUSE of eternity. The death of his friend was more poignant, more gut wrenching, more full of ache exactly because he loved Lazarus with an eternal love. When his friend died he felt the sorrow of Lazarus' loss echo for long after his natural life would be over.
He came to say that it matters- it all matters. Our beautiful little lives don't have to go down in ashes and dust and become the particles that are lost in a history of small moments. He created an eternity for our precious lives, so that every moment that pulls our heart out of our mouths in a huge smile or bitter tears will have infinite moments to follow it. He took the smallness that is our story and he stretched it out infinitely. Easter, for me, is the promise that joyful seconds last and that my hardest moments will not be lost. He is holding my joy in wait for me, and he holds my pain and myself in his tender hand.
