Happy Easter, Munchkin.
Another major holiday has come and nearly gone and you’re not here with us. There were no eggs to hide again this year. No baskets of candy. No trips to see the Easter bunny.
I will say that I’m handling this a lot better than I handled last Christmas. I even texted my friend with the baby and told her that pics would be welcomed today. That they wouldn’t cause the same pain like that awful morning back in December.
So, why is the absence of you on another major holiday less of a problem than it was three months ago?
I think it has to do with how I relate to each holiday. Even though Christmas is a religious day, when I was a child it had nothing to do with Jesus’ birth and everything to do with family. My parents weren’t the slightest bit religious, but we celebrated Christmas. It was a huge day in our house. My entire life, I’ve always associated that day with decorating the tree, hanging mistletoe, gift giving, making cookies, digging into stockings and watching football. Christmas had everything to do with family, and I looked forward that day, and the huge family meal, and the eggnog, and utter mess of our den on Christmas morning, with ribbons and bows and wrapping paper strewn everywhere. As an adult, I’ve kept that association. It’s a literal holy day for me now, too, but Christmas will always mean family. So not having you on Christmas year after year tears me apart.
However, Easter was just a day to go to the mall and hunt eggs. Sometimes we’d hide them ourselves, and my parents would always have baskets of goodies for us, but it wasn’t an event like Christmas was. My mom would sometimes cook a roast or a ham, but not always. It was just another day.
It wasn’t until I became a Christian myself did Easter really start to mean anything to me. But now it does. It matters to me in a way that has little to do with family and egg hunts, and more about my connection with Jesus Christ. This is a very personal holiday.
Do I want to share this with you? Do I want to share in the joy of the resurrection and take you on Easter egg hunts? Do I want to give you baskets filled with goodies? Of course I do. But that’s not what matters the most on this holiest of days.
People have asked me if this journey has lessened my love for Jesus. The short answer is no, not really. But there’s more to it than that.
I wish we would have found you by now. I wish this journey was over, and the three of us would have started another, much happier one together. I wish I was able to have children in the first place, naturally. I wish this wouldn’t have been so hard.
But I’m not mad at God. And I don’t blame Him for any of this. I don’t love Him any less for what He’s putting us through. This has tested my faith, absolutely. Countless times I’ve asked myself why He’s given me this cross to bear. Countless times I’ve cried, and I’ve asked Him just how much longer I had to wait to meet you.
And honestly, I’ve questioned Him. I’ve gotten angry with Him and the utter unfairness of it all. That’s something I’m not super proud of, but I’m not perfect. I’ve asked Him why He made this so easy for some and has made it so incredibly difficult for your dad and me.
But I have faith. And I think that’s the nuts and bolts of all of this. Faith isn’t a switch that I can turn on and off.
I have faith that He has a plan for me, and while I may not see it; while I may not know what kind of plan it is, I have faith that He knows what He’s doing. It’s not supposed to make sense to me right now. Maybe some day it will, but I’m not divine. I can see the beauty in the divine, but I can’t understand it. Yet.
And I’ll tell you something else, too. This is not a blind faith anymore. My eyes are wide open. It would have been so much easier to use this challenge to turn away from Him. To say, “He’s not answering my prayers, He’s not hearing me when I call, so He must not care about me. He must not exist.”
It’s much harder searching for answers and waiting on the Lord. It’s much harder to be still and quiet and try to hold on to something that seems so far beyond your reach. It’s much, much harder to not give up.
It’s easy to believe in a higher power when everything is going your way, and your life is full of butterflies and rainbows. It’s much harder to keep the faith when things are falling apart, and you’ve been punched in the gut so many times you can’t breathe.
But life is full of choices. And life is full of heartache. It’s never an easy road, but it’s how you choose to deal with what you’re given. You can choose to shut down, or you can choose to rise above and press on. I’ll never give up searching for you, and I’ll never give up on God.
I choose faith. I choose to believe that He’s still here, and He’s still working in my life. I choose to believe in a God of miracles, and I choose to believe He loves me, and He’ll see this through to the end.
I choose faith. It’s really as simple as that. I choose to believe that one day, this will all make sense. And I can accept that day is not today.
One day, we’ll have you with us to celebrate in Jesus’ resurrection. Once day, we’ll dress you up in frilly little outfits and set you screaming into the lap of some fat man in a bunny costume for reasons I still don’t fully understand. One day we’ll dye Easter eggs and eat way too much chocolate and play Fluffy Bunny with Peeps. But that day is not today.
So today, I celebrate my love for Jesus. I celebrate with my friends, and your daddy, and I keep my faith that Jesus knows what He’s doing. I’ve seen Him work so many miracles in my life, and I know that He has at least one more big one in store for me.
And I know in my heart that we’ll be together soon.
Love you so much,
Mom
My Stork Got Lost 