The Evolution of Easter

When I look back over the years, I realize Easter has changed for me. I don't remember the exact year these changes happened so I'll basically just group them into age groups.

Earliest I can remember... 
The earliest memory I have of Easter is going to Church Easter morning. It was chaotic. I remember that my parents were trying to get me and my brother out of the house (because we were at that age where Church was booooorrrring). My brother had fallen down part of the stairs and was screaming and I had tripped over the base of the stair banister and hurt my knee. The rest was a blur of chaos.


Young years... like kindergarten/1st grade time period.
When I was little, I had it in my mind that the Easter Bunny was this 6 foot tall white bunny with a giant red bow on his neck. Something like this... except with a bigger bow-tie.

I used to write him letters because for some reason I thought the Easter Bunny was like Santa, in that he wouldn't come if you had been "bad" that year. So naturally, in my letter, I would put my explanations as to why I was mean to my brother, and then I would write all the good things I had done in hopes of canceling out the bad things.

With the help of my mom, my letter would be something like this: "Dear Easter Bunny, Sorry I've been mean to my brother Matt. Sometimes he's just real annoying. I've been really nice to all my friends though. And I'm doing good in school. I love my parents and my dog. And Easter is my favorite (flat out lying at this point). I hope you like the sticker I picked for you! Love, Alison"

I thought that maybe the Easter Bunny would see that I had actually been pretty good and therefore he would still leave me candy. I would also leave the Easter Bunny sparkly stickers from my sparkly sticker collection because I always thought that he would put the stickers on his bow-tie that he wore. I found out pretty quickly that I was the only little kid who believed this, thus ending my belief in the Easter Bunny at an early age. Santa was still cool with me though.

The majority of my childhood after I stopped believing in the Easter Bunny
These next few years are all kind of grouped together. It was typical to open Easter baskets on Easter morning after Church and then go to my Aunt's for the Easter party and the Easter egg hunt. I have a huge complaint about Easter egg hunts though. I am one of the oldest in my family, cousins included, so I would always be last. Still to this day I am last because I have always been the oldest... and yes... I still do Easter egg hunts. I'll explain later. But the hunts were always pretty intense in my family. Like if you dropped your basket and some eggs fell out... OH WELL! We were like vultures. If the egg fell out of your basket, it was gone within milliseconds. But we always got sooooo much candy.

My current years
Now Easter is more of a social thing for my cousins and I. But for some reason the adults will not stop doing Easter egg hunts. We are all really old now, but we still have to go look for the eggs they've hidden. The few young kids that are left run around in the frantic search for the plastic eggs, but us older kids have more fun with it. We'll sneak up behind the young kids and take eggs out of their baskets until they notice. Then we run away cackling. (We give them back of course, but not until the little kid catches us:) hahahaha!)  This year was even more fun because we played some games after the hunt too! We had one game where people were all given eggs. All but one were hard boiled. For the game you had to crack the egg over your head and whoever got the raw egg... well, yeah. You get the point. My Dad was the lucky winner of that egg. We also had an egg throwing game where you had to through RAW eggs at a target. My egg's shell was hard as a rock. I swear. I ended up breaking the target twice before my egg broke. This game was a whole lot of fun, but a lot of people ended up covered in raw egg... I don't even know how that happened.

I've realized that the only thing that hasn't changed for me and Easter, is the fact that my brothers and I always get a new toothbrush in our Easter basket. Yep. A toothbrush.
"What did you get for Easter?" 
"A Barbie, Candy, a boombox, and 10 dollars! What did you get?" 
"Candy and a toothbrush."
But I guess now it's kind of a tradition.
And I guess I can use that toothbrush to make sure I don't end up at the Dentist with a thousand cavities... because we all know how much I hate the Dentist...

Happy Easter!!! (A day late)

We're All Just Really Bad Swimmers

So tonight at dinner I was talking to my friend Kelly about everything stressful going on in my life. Right now I'm at a bit of a low point. I have classes to sign up for and after talking to my advisor I still don't know what I am doing, I just signed up to train to run a marathon in 15 weeks after school starts again, I don't know how I am doing in some of my classes, summer plans are more chaotic than ever, and I have spent over 5 hours working on general class level homework in the past two days. I literally feel like I'm drowning in stuff (So thats where that phrase comes from!). Well, as I talked more and more to Kelly, I started to draw a parallel of swimming to God. So, here goes...

(Disclaimer: This is my personal metaphor/parallel even though I use the word "we". I'm not saying everyone experiences the same thing. If you do then thats great. But this is more of my own personal "struggle" with God.)

All of our lives we are learning to swim (live) in this big ocean (life). God is the one who put us in this ocean, but none of know how to swim. But God, being God, isn't just gonna let us drown. No, no, no. He's there. He is like one of those red lifeguard floats. And we are usually taught from birth/Christianity, to grab onto that float if we don't want to drown. So as little kids we grab it. We hold onto God because we are told to. I don't think we really know what that float really is at that age, but we hold onto it anyway. As we grow older, we start to kick and try to swim on our own. (This is like a parallel that we start to venture away from God since we don't really know him on a personal level.) Then there comes a time when we think we can do it! We can swim without that float! We can live without God. WRONG! At first you can do it. You think "This is easy!". But then you start to drown. It's scary. But the float is always there. It is never out of arm's reach. As you begin to drown, you realize that swimming without the float is impossible, so you grab back on and vow never to leave the float again.

That could be the end of the story, but it's not. Once you get back on that float, you are happy. You realize that the ocean is much better when you are floating. After awhile though, you get distracted. That's like what's happening to me now. Life starts to throw a lot of stuff at your face and it begins to stress you out. Waves begin to hit you in the face. Some people hold on to the float harder... those are the really good people. But others, like me, begin to think of the float as a hassle. They begin to forget that the float is what's keeping them from not drowning. They focus too much on the waves and begin to let go of the float again. You may be able to get through some of the waves on your own, but there's always that one wave. It hits you hard... right in the face. You begin to drown again. And the only thing thats going to save you is that float... thats always right there next to you wether you see it or not.

So you see my parallel? When life is going good, it's so easy to begin to push God aside. When life begins to get stressful, it's so easy to push God aside. When something goes bad, it's so easy to push God aside. But without him, we are going to drown. He's always there for us even if we start to lose sight of him. He's just waiting for us to reach out and grab him again. He put us in this ocean knowing that we don't know how to swim without a float. But he's there to help us stay above water, and once we learn to never let go of that float, we begin to thrive. We're all just really bad swimmers without God:)

My cousin, Christine:)