Last week, my dad bought an Easter lily. We’ve been visiting my parents in Ottawa and the kids were quite taken with the idea of the lily when it arrived in the house. It came in all wrapped up in white paper and with purple cellophane inside. But when we took the wrapping off, there weren’t any flowers to see. Just green leaves and four or five big fat buds, but everything was green and, as Beangirl pointed out, it didn’t smell right. I told her it would – just not yet. We’d have to wait.
It’s been a good Easter for us. We waited a long time for it to come. It was back at Christmas that we told the kids that we’d be celebrating Easter in Ottawa. We hid Christmas cards among the branches of our tree – one for each of them – and hidden inside each card was a Canadian five dollar bill. Wealth. And so exotic for my expat kids. They loved the hockey players, and they dreamed of all the things they could buy. We pinned the bills to the bulletin board and waited for spring. And grandparents. And cousins. And Easter.
We’ve spent the past couple of weeks reconnecting with family and with Ottawa. It was great to be home – whatever that words means. Sure, it’s heart and heritage and family, but when raising expat kids, there’s always a degree of exhausting translation that goes on. It’s been almost three years since we left Ottawa, and Blue wasn’t even two at that stage. They remembered some people and some places but so much was new. So many people to meet who seemed to know them already. So many unfamiliar familiars – like light switches. They also needed to learn how to play in the snow – real Ottawa snow, not Edinburgh’s soft and temporary stuff. But, like the good little church mice they are, I found that you could throw them into any Presby congregation and they’d find their feet pretty quickly. Over our time in Ottawa, we got the chance to worship with both St Andrews Church on Palm Sunday and with Knox Church on Easter Sunday. It was so good to see so many people again. As I wrote last week, there were so many blessings. It was overwhelmingly wonderful to reconnect.
But it was also strange because it didn’t quite feel settled. Kind of like I was only half-way there. Like I wasn’t home yet. It was surreal and overly real and often I felt a bit off-balance. So, Ottawa folk, if I seemed rather spacey – it might have been that. Or maybe it was pregnancy fatigue. (Trimester #3 is creeping up on me at an alarming rate.) Maybe it was jetlag. But at the root, I think that maybe it’s just that home is complicated. Just like so much work of the heart.
The lily did open. Slowly one then another bud relaxed its grip and began to yawn. At first, we were unsure that it would and, even when it was opening, we still doubted that the fragrance would be as wonderful as lilies we’d had in previous years. But by Sunday, there were three flowers wide and trumpeting, and the whole house was scented with Easter. The kids ran around, causing drafts, and the perfume travelled with them.
Some years, Easter is loud and sudden with the reality of the resurrection. Sometimes, it’s more gradual. Sometimes, it feels so needed. Sometimes, it’s quiet and begins slowly. Always, it’s a process. Things begin with Easter – and begin again. We are reminded and returned to joy. St Andrews Church traced the days of Lent with a sermon series focussing on the “re” words of our faith. I love the idea of the continual return to God, to continuing invitation from God, reopening us, renewing us, resurrecting us. Resurrection is not the punchline; it is the road opening before us.
I didn’t get this column posted yesterday because we were travelling again. I tried to write it before Easter Sunday, but I didn’t feel ready. I knew I wanted to write about resurrection as process, but I couldn’t really find words. I think I needed to be in Easter, surrounded by my mad and beautiful family, encouraged by my long-term friends. I needed to be reminded of life’s newness and God’s faithfulness. I needed the process of resurrection to begin again in the messy details of my own life and travels.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!
