Happy Easter

Happy Easter from the prairie! We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day in the low 40s (hard to believe I'm calling that beautiful), clear skies and no snow. The snow melted a few weeks ago, but on Thursday another inch fell. I was pretty frustrated. But it melted on Friday and with any luck we'll only have rain from now until summer. Anyhow, back to Easter. After church, we had lunch at my parents and then the famous egg hunt.

At church, this morning, they had a story time for the kids 3-10 years old up on the stage. Stephanie, the children's pastor, took a piece of paper and put it in a pan of water and tried lighting it. When she couldn't, she asked the kids, "Do you know anyone who could do such an amazing and impossible thing?" Adam, who was sitting just a few inches from the microphone, said "That would be my dad." Stephanie could easily see us sitting in the third row and asked, "Scott, what do you think of that?" So after service, a lot of people greeted Scott as the "man who can do anything."

But the real Easter excitement happened this evening. At bedtime, Adam and I read a book called "Let's Celebrate Jesus on Easter." Afterwards, I asked Adam to again tell me why we celebrate Easter. He answered, "Because Jesus died and rose again." That started a discussion between the two of us about heaven. I told Adam that he could see Jesus (and Dido, GG and Buddy -- those who have died in his lifetime) in heaven one day if he told Jesus he believed in his death and resurrection (I used another word, I think) and asked Him to come live in his heart. He said, "okay." Puzzled, as this isn't the first time we've talked about this, I asked, "So do you want to pray right now? Pray with mommy about this?" He said, "Yeah." I told him to repeat after me and we prayed together. When we said Amen, I told him this meant Jesus was always with him, always there for him to talk to and ask for help and that he'd one day go to heaven with Mommy and Daddy. Then we called Daddy to come and celebrate with us.

Adam was so excited about what we'd just done together that we could hardly get him back into bed. He was dancing around the room and suddenly decided he needed to clean up his room too. (a sure sign the Holy Spirit was at work!) We'd had communion on Good Friday and Adam had asked about what we were doing. (At our church, we walk to the front to take communion) We explained to him that it was something we did to remember how Jesus died for us and that one day when he asked Jesus into his heart he too could take communion. So one of the things he was excited about tonight was being able to go up and take bread and juice with us.

I can't tell you the joy we both feel tonight! Of course, being pregnant and emotional, I've been crying tears of joy and tears of relief. And I can hear the angels rejoicing tonight!