I am currently re-reading “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. (Author of “The Kite Runner.”) I am re reading it bc I enjoyed it the first time and because I have yet to get to the library to check out a few more novels to see me through the days at my boring job. This book is about the plight of women in Afghanistan and the cultural norms that are in place which serve to make the lives of women harder. It’s heroine who was born out of wedlock, is persecuted and considered “less than” because of her birth status. She is given in marriage by her insincere and absent father at the age of 15 to a 50 year old guy. And all that goes with married … Her life is hard and she struggles through beatings, mistreatment and more than you can imagine.

And so I sit at my desk with nothing covering my head carrying my soon to be newborn daughter. Each of us two gals have an endless meadow of possiblities before us. I can still be or do whatever I want to be or do, do back to school for dietetics hopefully. And she can also live and grow, free and loved, with a father who doesn’t send her away as an adolescent or treat her as anything less than a beautiful creation of God with the same rights as all the rest. I could have been born into anything, she could have been born into anything. If you are a women the same is true, if you are a man you could have been raised to believe truths about women which are quite different than the ones you currently hold. (which I hope are equalistic and biblical) Anyway, you weren’t. I wasn’t, and baby girl Penny won’t have to experience it either. So today I am just thankful to be a woman in America. I am thankful for my husband, my education, and my upbringing. For my God, and I pray he is with those and shows himself to those who are so much less fortunate than I am.

So here’s to pants, push-up bras, and the right to vote, and all the other (maybe more important things we get to have as american women.

- Because he lives, I can face tomorrow because he lives, all fear is gone, because I know he holds the future, and life is worth the living just because he lives
- No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me, from life’s first cry to final breath Jesus commands my destiny.
- Where oh death is now your sting?

I could go on but those are the foam on the top of the mug of Easter hymns floating through me.

I love mixing contemporary worship in with classic hymns because I really do believe that some truths have already been perfectly stated. And I love that it brings me back to hearing my Grandma sing them in church as a little girl, and the smell of her Sunday coat, and the windmill cookies and orange drink after church…

But you have to apply it to your own life in order for it to resonate so here is my Easter hymn

Because he lives…
- The mental illness of my family has no power of the kind of Mother I am.
- I will get to laugh and cry about life with my Dad someday
- I will never let this life overtake me, and destroy my hope
- I will bloom where I am planted and stop lamenting about where I am not.
- I will not let worrying about potential problems steal the joy from my life
- I will demonstrate this faith to my children
- I will show them the love that runs between Kel and I and model for them what marriage in Christ lives like.
- I will fight to feel the hope and see the truth in each day
- I will keep going, keep fighting, and keep healing from whatever this life throws at me
- I will remember that because he lives restoration from the brokenness is coming for my sister.

I will live as one in-between salvation and restoration.

Because he lives.

Yesterday was a productive day indeed. We got a lot done and then I crashed on the couch. I have been sick all week and I overdid it, promptly followed by an evening of what I would call underdoing it. But today is still Sunday and there is no pressure to be up to anyone’s standards. I would still like to grab some cough drops and head to church, I really love my church.

So I don’t feel right entering Holy Week. I feel like it snuck up on me, I feel like my heart isn’t ready. I never feel like I feel it enough to be worthy of what it’s all about. Its gets lost in the busy-ness of what we are gearing up for or coming down from or just plodding along with. And then it sneaks up and surprises me with it’s reality and I worry that I just don’t give it the heart space that it is due. If you think about Jelly Beans more than Jesus, we have a problem folks. Not that I do but I wouldn’t put it past me.

Also no one is having Easter dinner, that is strange to me. Last year when that was the case I made it for some friends in KY but here I figure everyone has an easter dinner place to be. And by dinner I of course mean sunday dinner which is a big meal centered around a big piece of shared meat served in the early afternoon. I’m game if you are.

I need a shower and I suspect the steam will feel lovely on my throat.