Kim Wilbanks

A little girl came skipping into my thoughts around midnight as I lay in bed trying to go to sleep.  She was wearing a pastel, floral dress, ruffled socks and white patent leather shoes.  Her hair was done just so — we used to call it angel hair — and she had a handful of small red dots on her face.  Chicken pox.

It was my four-year-old daughter dressed in her Easter finery in spite of the overnight outcropping of the chicken pox passed on from her older brother.

Oh, come sit on my lap again.

Come throw your arms around my neck and tell me that you love me.

Let me hold you and tell you you’re my best girl in the whole world.

But she didn’t.  The image vanished leaving only a memory.  I thought I heard a little girl’s giggle.

A parade of images marching through my mind followed — my toddler son shaking hands with the Easter Bunny, my daughter’s first Easter when we had matching Laura Ashley dresses and my son wore a pink sports coat to coordinate, Easter lunch with extended family, epic egg hunts in my grandmother’s vast yard, baskets from grandparents filled with candy and treats and all the sweet Easter dresses purchased from a children’s boutique the summer before.

Those memories are the ghosts of Easters past.

Easter Treats Sent to Scotland

Egg Hunt

Higgins

Island Church

Ready For Easter in Spite of the Chicken Pox

Katelyn’s First Easter

It’s different in the empty nest. 

• No shopping for Easter outfits
• No Easter baskets filled with candy and stuffed animals (although I couldn’t resist sending a package of Easter goodies across the pond)
• No eggs to dye
• No extended family get-together
• No posing for pictures

Instead, a quiet weekend spent contemplating the sacrifice made by a Savior who loves us, a worshipful celebration of His resurrection at our island church and Easter lunch with my husband and parents.  Maybe that’s exactly how it should be — for now, anyway.

Happy Easter

He is Risen