(Not so) Good Friday

Being married to a pastor means that holidays are a little hectic.  Ok, a lot hectic.  I'm not complaining - there are many great things about being in ministry that far outweigh the bad.  But during church holidays (Christmas and Good Friday/Easter primarily), I'm pretty much a single mom.  On Good Friday, I was getting all 3 girls ready for church and things got a little out of hand totally crazy.  Like, some sensationalized episode of The Nanny kind of crazy.  Did I mention 3 girls?  That's 3 heads of hair to fancify and let me tell you, it's not easy.  Between the 3 of them, there is enough hair to rival Rapunzel.  (ok, slight exaggeration)  We had spent the day cooking and cleaning and all the kids pitched in.  We were hosting Easter at our house and for some crazy reason I got it in my head to do a "proper" Easter dinner, complete with China (which we dug out from under the stairs, unopened since we moved here.... 5 years ago!) and appetizers and side dishes and 3 pies for dessert.  Mmmmm.... I just love pie.  On top of my crazy notion of a "proper" Easter, I decided to do all the cooking.  Those of you who know me well, you can stop laughing.  Get back on whatever chair you just fell off of.  Yes, Matt does most all of the cooking in this house.  You know those helpless husbands whose wives have to leave them prepared meals in the fridge when they're gone to keep them from reverting to frozen pizza or cereal for dinner?  I'm that guy.  Only I'm a girl.  Which somehow seems so much more pathetic.  But I digress...


Fast forward a few hours, and it's time for Matt to leave for church.  We have a few hours to get everyone bathed, dressed and fabulous (remember, 3 girls) which is more than enough time.  I'm getting organized in my old age.  I swear to you, no sooner did the door close, and my previously angelic little girls turned into hellions.  Heads spinning, smoke coming from their nostrils and everything.  (ok, slight exaggeration again.  I'm a fan of hyperboles.)  Let me clarify that the tiny offenders were my biological children - our newest addition seems to have retained a healthy fear of getting into trouble.  Apparently I'm not scary enough to my older girls.  The next few hours were torture for all parties involved.  3 baths, 2 french braids and 1 gigantic headache later and the only Good thing about this Friday was the fact that it wouldn't come around for another year.  There was crying and eye rolling and arm folding and lots and lots of feet stomping.  I tried to keep it together - I was determined to fight the madness and not let the tiny rebels suck me into their battle, but they wore me down.  And before I knew it, I was yelling and threatening and acting like a crazy hellion myself.  Sigh...  


We managed to get ourselves into the car and as every buckled down in, it hit me.  Today is Good Friday.  Of course I knew this already, but sometimes it's the things we know most that we understand least.  Good Friday is the day our Savior died, taking our punishment and making eternal life with Him possible.  But what I forgot on that day was that Jesus died not just to absolve us from sin's punishment, but to free us from sin's power.  He didn't just bear the weight of our sins on that cross, He wrestled with that weight and came up victorious.  My Savior defeated sin so that it would never control me - His power, the same power that conquered Sin, lives in me. 


In that moment, I had 2 choices: I could silently pray for forgiveness and try to salvage the rest of the day or I could invite my children to pray with me, leading by example as I confessed my sins.  That's when I heard a still, small voice.  No, not God's - my daughter's.  Mom, can we start over?


Start over.  As if we had been forgiven, redeemed, justified.  It sounded like a perfect Good Friday solution.  So we talked about our day, confessed our sins, asked for forgiveness from each other and our Savior.  We talked about Jesus' death and resurrection and how He defeated Sin so it would no longer rule our lives.  And we attended Good Friday service together, with a newfound appreciation for what it meant.  After service as we headed home, Isabel asked me what their consequence was, and I had one of those rare moments where everything becomes clear and I knew exactly what God was doing in the hearts of my girls that day.  I talked about how Christ took our punishment on the cross - we deserved the greatest consequence, but Jesus stepped forward and offered to take it for us.  And while those of us who have only known a life with Christ often fail to grasp what we have been saved from, we need try.  We need to wrestle with and immerse ourselves in the idea of a Love so great that it would take our miserable, forsaken place, because only when we truly begin to understand that Love will we be able to celebrate the freedom it has brought us.  As much as I want my children to understand God's love, I know that He wants it for them so much more.  So I offered them the same gift He offers to us each day.


Freedom.  From sin and from it's consequences.  Some of you are catching on and yes, my answer to my daughter's question What's my consequence? was this: I'm not going to give you one.  Not because you don't deserve it, but because I want you - no, God wants you - to learn a lesson about forgiveness today.  This day, Good Friday, is the day that His Son took your punishment, and our sins were forgiven.  Then we went on to name the sins we had committed that day, and we pretended to put them on the cross.  By the end, Isabel was giggling, but not in a silly-1st-grader-up-past-her-bedtime sort of way. She was simply filled with joy - forgiveness will do that for you.  That child will carry the weight of the world around on her tiny shoulders, but in that moment she was able to put that weight on a very capable Savior.  


Fast forward to Easter morning (again, with the 3 girls and the hair and dresses and generalized fancifying).  Nothing went right that morning - there was an epic milk spill, the camera ran out of batteries, and we discovered one of those pesky theft-deterent tags (you know the ones that threaten to spew poisonous ink on you if you try to remove them) on one of the girl's Easter dresses.  But this time we were ready.  Armed and dangerous.  Sin had no hold on us, and thank God (literally) we made it out of the house without a meltdown.  


So now that Easter is over, don't stop celebrating.  Jesus is risen, and His work in us has just begun.  If we believe in Him, the power that raised Him from the dead is in us - so let's put that power to work.  Let us not leave Easter packed away until next year, our Savior didn't defeat death so that we could sing about it once (or twice) a year.  Death is conquered - let us rejoice, Sin is defeated - let us live as conquerors, Forgiveness is available to all who believe - let us embrace it and share it with the world.


Happy Easter.