Celebrating Life!

Celebrating Easter at a lake with family & friends - note the trumpet guy :)

Our newly-nine-year-old!

Good Friday ten years ago was full of darkness. Only a few short days before, we had lost our first baby in a miscarriage. Walking into the candlelit sanctuary, I saw our pregnant teenage friend out of the corner of my eye. Full of emotion, I dragged myself up to the foot of the cross and knelt. After a few moments, the girl knelt beside me and wrapped her arms around me. Her act touched me deeply and jealousy melted into tears as we wept in front of the cross together – Both of us wondering what the future held.

One of the worst things about a miscarriage is that you have no promise of new life. You cannot see the future. Your little angel has died – and with it, a dream. You cannot see the end of the story.

Never before had Good Friday looked so utterly hopeless. For the first time I understood a tiny bit of what the disciples had felt so many years before. Their Messiah had died – and with him, a dream. They did not know the end of the story.

Almost exactly a year later on April 6, our precious Katrina Ruth was born with the first blossoms of spring. She was barely a week old when we dedicated her on Easter Sunday. “Isn’t that too early?” our concerned mothers asked. But our decision was final. For this Easter we held hope in our arms and for the first time, we really understood what it means to go from despair to hope, from darkness to light, and from death to life.

From Katrina’s birth announcement:
(Based on Song of Solomon 2:10-11)

Arise, my love, my lovely one come,
Winter is past and the rains are gone
Flowers appear, it’s the season of song,
My beautiful one, arise and come with me

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A Joyous Easter Season to all!!!