EASTER AT HOME

By Christine Jayakaran

Easter is so undervalued and barely celebrated. I mean do you see Easter decor at malls or do you bake Easter cake? I mean we have Easter eggs but whats the deal with that???! Forgive me for my rant but its such a hope filled celebration that I think should be given more credit.

Anyway, just last week I had an experience at home with my kids that I think perfectly depicted what Easter is really all about.

So my daughter Celeste absolutely hates eating her three major meals. She loves snacking but having to sit down to a proper lunch and dinner is not her thing. She will sit with her lunch for two hours while we have finished and have moved on with our lives. I have tried everything from coddling to threatening and nothing works. I finally withdrew her privilege of being able to play outside in the evenings with her friends if she wasted her lunch and boy did that work! Or did it? She spent that whole evening whining and following me around complaining until I wanted to pull every hair follicle out of my scalp one by one! More than that though I hated keeping her confined and away from her friends. It felt so mean. So in my head I knew I wouldn't do that to her again (but I still use it as a last resort BIG GUN! Don't judge me! Parenting gets hard sometimes).

So coming back to last week, she had been staring at her meal for a good one hour so I gave her a 20 minute deadline. If she was not done by 2pm she would not be able to play with her friends. (Considering her summer break had begun she looked extra upset with this threat!)

At 1:50 she had barely made any progress and so I took the law into my own hands and.................

I fed her. The whole time I fed her she had her eyes on the clock. As the clock struck two I fed her the last mouthful. She was in the clear and free to play with her friends that day! It was an Easter Miracle!

Okay so that may be taking it too far but the story doesn't end there. When my daughter got done on time she is overwhelmed and is joyfully prancing around the mall but my son looks disappointed and says 'Aww man! Now she gets to come play outside! Why did you help her finish on time ma!'

His attitude was quite brash and irritating but then I got the perfect chance to explain what grace and mercy really were. It's when we so don't deserve something or just can't accomplish something on our own that someone else steps in to make it possible with no strings attached. I wanted my daughter to succeed, I wanted her to win at the expense of my time and effort.

Without Jesus intervening for us and saving us from ourselves we would never have had hope. He doesn't save us because we are annoying or whiny and so needs us to get off his back but because he genuinely loves us and wants to see us thrive in joy and freedom.

IF you thought my story was lame and just didn't get it it's cool. (I'm a full time mum so I find application in every-little-thing my kids do, however trivial it is. Sorry- not sorry!)