Easter Solitude

Easter morning fog

This morning as people all over the country don their finest Sunday best to attend worship, I sit alone in a hotel room. As much as I hate to miss worship on Easter Sunday, I am exactly where I need to be. The fog outside my window is so thick I cannot see the businesses across the highway and, even though fog is not what most people wish for on a spring Easter morning, it too is exactly what I need on this day of hope and contemplation. Quietness, solitude, and a little fog are the perfect formula for bringing out the thoughts of this head and heart this day…maybe even more than worship and celebration. If you’ve never sat alone in bed in your nightgown with a cup of coffee when everyone else around you is swirling in the dizziness of activities and must-do’s, you should try it. It brings a clarity like nothing else can.

Solitude has been a rare commodity lately. When you share a small space with another (even if that other is your soulmate), and you are a person who needs solitude from time to time, that much-needed solitude is hard to find. My head and heart have run the gamut of known-to-man emotions over the last couple of weeks -- everything from peace and relief to panic and confusion from utter fatigue. There actually have been a couple of times when I’ve thought that I most certainly have lost my mind and just might need to be committed! But, alas, the heart and mind have a way of balancing themselves out and returning to whatever the norm is for you, and my normal right now is knowing that my life is a little bit crazy, but blessed with great reward!

So my focus on this quiet Easter morning is not all the unknowns, not all the daily struggles, not all the constant challenges that sometimes come with the work the hubs and I do, but the things that keep me grounded and are constants in my life, like faith and family. All too many times we focus on the negative, only to feel shame when the real blessings of life swing into full view and we realize that we have so much for which to be thankful. And sometimes it’s the tiniest things in life that are the greatest blessings but we fail to recognize them because we are focused on the bigger things – like how to make a living and how to pay the bills and put food on the table.

I challenge you today on this Easter Sunday 2016 to count your blessings. To look for the tiny blessings in each and every day because I guarantee you they are there. I recently saw the movie Miracles from Heaven, the true story of the little girl who had an incurable disease but was healed when she fell headfirst into a hollow tree. But just like the girl’s mom, we too are sometimes so intent on seeing the big miracles in life that we don’t always see the smaller ones that are every bit as important. Like the kindness shown to us by a stranger. Or the joy of a new friendship that is budding. Or the daily blessing of an old friend, who is there through the thick and the thin of it. Or good health. Or the ability to walk or run or talk or eat. These smaller blessings are too numerous to count, yet we take them for granted.

​But just as the fog lifts and the sky clears to a vivid blue, so do our hearts and minds when we take the time out to allow what is good and real and true to come into focus.

A very blessed Easter to you all…

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Spring beauty

Three of my greatest blessings