The Year the Tulips Bloomed Victorious

 

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Last fall, in a cold shadow, we planted defiance. I was so angry at death. So angry again at cancer. So tired of funerals. I gathered my children in our front garden bed and I made a promise that even I wasn't sure was a good idea. 

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take all these tulip bulbs--90 for the ninety years that Granddad lived--and we're going to bury them in the cold ground. In the spring, around Easter, they will bloom. In the spring, we are going to feel so much better than we do now and those new tulips will make us smile.

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For twenty-four years, I've had a love-hate-fear relationshp with tulips. For the first fifteen years after my cancer diagnosis, I refused to plant them. Then, I decided that we are overcomers. We are tulip planters. Ever since, we've planted bulbs. 

This year, we went all in. They were planted too shallowly, planted by a not-quite-five-year-old. No doubt, some were planted upside down. I didn't go back and replant them. I didn't overturn the imperfect planting technique, didn't give in to my familiar need to control all things. I just let them be. It was a very harsh winter. Very cold and very snowy well into late March. Every once in awhile I would rehearse what I was going to say to my children when they asked why "Granddad's tulips" didn't bloom.

The shoots first started poking above the ground the week that Shawn died. That was, incidentally, the week adenovirus moved into my house for an extended stay. I texted my friend Nicole and asked what would come of them if we had snow again (we did). Surely, we hadn't buried deeply enough. Hadn't done it right. Surely, we were going to be denied the bright promise of hope and healing. She said they'd be fine. I doubted. She owns a landscaping company. I own fear. 

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Spring came late.

All the flowers, all the flowering trees, the bluebells at Bull Run. They all came late. 

Easter came late.

And Lucy Shawn came late.

The whole world responded with a giant Alleluia!

It's April 29. There are tulips. And there is abundant life. 

~*~*~

 {We have an appointment for Nick and Karoline today at the eye specialist. Adenovirus lives on. Prayers, please?}

The Catholic Church Oppresses Women?

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I’ve written countless times about my deep love for John Paul II. He was the wise father of my childhood, the only pope I really remembered being pope. Then, he was the guiding presence of my newlywed years, my pregnant years, nearly all my childbearing years. I was 39 the year he died, right on the brink of turning 40 and embracing all the changes that come with midlife. It was as if he’d taken me that far, and then there was a changing of the guard. I had walked the path of early adulthood, knowing that the Holy Father had a vision for what I could be. I heard his voice throughout my growing years, and I knew his expectations of me as a young woman.

The reality is that I had two more babies in my 40s, so the demarcation between childbearing and midlife wasn’t sharp and crisp. And the reality is that, contrary to what many people seem to think, John Paul II wasn’t just a pope for women who were mothers with children at home. He saw the grace and the beauty and the genuine, sweeping gift to humanity that motherhood was, but that was not the full extent of his appreciation for the feminine genius. Please read the rest here.

Is it Easter yet?

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There are very few "Easter" pictures of my children on my camera. Since the week of Ash Wednesday, we having been waging war with adenovirus. And I'm telling you with all sincerity, it's one formidable foe. I have never encountered a childhood illness that lingers so long with such fierce intensity. There have been all the usual things: croup, bronchitis, vomiting, body aches, fever. And then, we have been visited by the more extreme manifestations, particularly swollen, oozy, eyes that drip blood for weeks on end. Every morning, I keep hoping that everyone will awaken and no one will require assistance just getting his or her eyes to open. 

We had one bluebell day all together. And we had one bluebell day where several children stayed home and I went with the others to meet some ladies from the Restore Workshop. And that is all. Usually, we take a week and go every day. This year, we'd planned to camp there overnight. There are amazing flowers blooming on perfectly gorgeous spring days! And my children are so light sensitive that hardly anyone wants to be there. So we stay home.

So, in these days, I am particularly grateful for the tree blooming outside my front window. I'm inhaling its loveliness. (Well, actually, I hold my breath and just look at it because Bradford pear blooms are pretty stinky.) I am beyond grateful (what is the word for that?), that 90 tulip bulbs planted when Granddad died are showing up in all kinds of glory this week. Could it be that they heard that a baby is on her way and they've all come out to greet her?

And that baby... we are eagerly awaiting her arrival. Every day, Kristin comes to pass the time here. A tiny bit of sewing, some time in the garden, a daily walk where we just talk and talk. These are the tender mericies, the glimpses of Easter.

The Church has sung its Alleluia. I sort of feel like I missed it. Then I remember: Easter is a season

New life. Happening soon.

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By far, my favorite Easter basket ever. I think Garry Brix captured Shawn so perfectly!

If you have a moment, would you ask St. Lucy to say a prayer for us?

Waiting, watching...

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Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come
to pass from this world to the Father.
He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.
The devil had already induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand him over.
So, during supper, 
fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power 
and that he had come from God and was returning to God, 
he rose from supper and took off his outer garments.
He took a towel and tied it around his waist.
Then he poured water into a basin 
and began to wash the disciples’ feet 
and dry them with the towel around his waist.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, 
“Master, are you going to wash my feet?”
Jesus answered and said to him,
“What I am doing, you do not understand now,
but you will understand later.”
Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered him, 
“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Simon Peter said to him, 
“Master, then not only my feet, but my hands and head as well.”
Jesus said to him, 
“Whoever has bathed has no need except to have his feet washed,
for he is clean all over; 
so you are clean, but not all.”
For he knew who would betray him;
for this reason, he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

So when he had washed their feet 
and put his garments back on and reclined at table again, 
he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you?
You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, 
you ought to wash one another’s feet.
I have given you a model to follow, 
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

 

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So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross himself, 
he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, 
in Hebrew, Golgotha.
There they crucified him, and with him two others, 
one on either side, with Jesus in the middle.
Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross.
It read,
“Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.”
Now many of the Jews read this inscription, 
because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; 
and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.
So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, 
“Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’
but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.”
Pilate answered,
“What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, 
they took his clothes and divided them into four shares, 
a share for each soldier.
They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless, 
woven in one piece from the top down.
So they said to one another, 
“Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be, “ 
in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says:
They divided my garments among them,
and for my vesture they cast lots
.
This is what the soldiers did.
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother
and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas,
and Mary of Magdala.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved
he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”
Then he said to the disciple,
“Behold, your mother.”
And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

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After this, aware that everything was now finished, 
in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, 
Jesus said, “I thirst.”
There was a vessel filled with common wine.
So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop 
and put it up to his mouth.
When Jesus had taken the wine, he said,
“It is finished.”
And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.

Now since it was preparation day,
in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath,
for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one, 
the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken 
and that they be taken down.
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first 
and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, 
they did not break his legs, 
but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, 
and immediately blood and water flowed out.
An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; 
he knows that he is speaking the truth, 
so that you also may come to believe.
For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:
Not a bone of it will be broken.
And again another passage says:
They will look upon him whom they have pierced.

After this, Joseph of Arimathea, 
secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, 
asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus.
And Pilate permitted it.
So he came and took his body.
Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, 
also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes 
weighing about one hundred pounds.
They took the body of Jesus 
and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, 
according to the Jewish burial custom.
Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, 
and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.
So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day; 
for the tomb was close by.

 

 

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