Simply Eg(g)erthe!

We didn't really have many plans for Easter this year. In our short time as a family of three, we have driven to DFW and Houston for the past two years for Easter. These celebrations have been wonderful, but fast and furious to drive south since Easter is a celebration that can only be held on Sunday (the day of our resurrected Lord!) And so, this year we made plans for no plans and decided to stay home for the first holiday since moving to San Antonio. The simplicity of our holiday weekend lead to some other clarifying thoughts....

Last week, as I was coming home from a girls weekend in Fort Worth, Logan told me he was driving home from church as the kids darted across the lawn for an Easter egg hunt we forgot about. Oh no, will Maddy not be able to hunt eggs this year since she won't be at church or with her cousins like last year? And then a friend told me about all she was buying for gifts to stuff in her children's Easter baskets. Both of these traditions got us thinking, again, about simplifying this holiday. With so many people right now in need and suffering from not having basic needs either from the loss of a home from a wildfire or an earthquake, we just decided this extra effort to celebrate this holiday was not going to be a part of our plan this year. Not to say that these things are bad, because traditions are fun and can create some wonderful memories for you and your children, but this year was just a time to reflect simply on the resurrection....not eggs...or bunnies...or baskets filled with treats.

21 weeks with Baby Hudson!

So after church we hid a few eggs in the front yard and let Maddy hunt mini M&M's and egg-filled pennies (my Granny's favorite egg filling). She was even satisfied enough from this simple search to smile for some snapshots. We didn't have a fancy Easter lunch (although I did miss my grandmother's deviled eggs), but ate sandwiches and talked about what we learned from church that morning.

The Greek word egerthe (egg-er-thu) means "HE IS RISEN!" in English. As I have been struggling to simplify and find the true meaning of the traditions that go along with Easter, I wondered, "why do we hunt eggs?" So the pastor this morning said that the word egerthe is our connection to this eggie holiday custom. We found the connection! He also mentioned that we go to die to wake up. I pray that we can die to our silly traditions and simply focus on waking up in Jesus every day. I pray that our traditions do not become what we celebrate, but that Christ's risen body is what we celebrate, his defeat over sin and death, his call to life eternal with our Heavenly Father.

I'm not saying we won't ever go to an Easter egg hunt again or eat a chocolate bunny, but maybe next time the shelves start to fill with "Easter" garb we can continue to have the conversation about what Easter really means. Because it means EGERTHE!





P.S. Since Zeke ate our swimming pool from last year, Maddy has found a small replacement...Zeke's water bucket. She invites us in every time, but for some reason she doesn't understand why we wouldn't fit in her mini hot tub. We really need to get a new pool!