Easter 2022

Happy Holy Week, everyone!

Writing my Maundy Thursday blog is always a bit odd for me. It’s not only a real-life holiday, but also the anniversary of the massacre that plays a significant role in Lukas’s backstory. The anniversary date works great within my fictional universe, but is a bit awkward in real life because I’m never quite sure what to blog about.

In the past, I think I’ve killed two birds with one stone by talking about how sometimes, holidays are hard because we miss deceased loved ones or something like that. For the first time in my life, I have some actual experience in that department. This Easter is going to be the first major holiday without my grandmother. And she loved Easter. She had a little Easter tree that my little-kid self would decorate with bunny and egg ornaments. She had an egg-shaped music box that played a little ditty, and she’d always sing along with it–“In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it, you’ll be the grandest lady at the Easter parade.”

The cool thing about Easter, though, is that it’s kind of a dual-purpose holiday. On the one hand, we remember the death of Christ, and on the other hand, we remember His resurrection. On a third metaphorical hand, we look forward to the resurrection of all the Christians who have gone on to heaven. But there’s another bit to Easter, a fourth bit, that I’m going to talk about today.

Today is known as Holy Thursday or, as I call it in my books, Maundy Thursday. Where the Maundy bit comes from, I don’t know. But it rhymes with “laundry,” which ties in pretty closely with Christ washing His disciples’ feet at the Last Supper. My pastor discussed this incident a few Sundays ago, and it kind of stuck with me. In today’s age, we don’t really wash other people’s feet. But I have a story about the washing of feet, and coincidentally, it involves my grandmother.

Long ago, back when Pa and Grammy lived across the cul-de-sac and through a couple people’s side yards from our house in Illinois, a favorite pastime of my sister’s and mine was playing with sidewalk chalk. We’d mostly chalk up our driveway. We had a blacktop driveway, but I seem to remember Pa and Grammy having a concrete one. Not that it matters. What matters for this story is that we were barefoot, and when you’re playing with chalk barefoot, you tend to wind up with feet that leave rainbow footprints everywhere. So when we were ready to come inside, Grammy was waiting for us with a bowl of water and a rag to wash our feet off with.

I can still hear her voice saying, “I got you some warm water. Don’t I get praise for that?”

Looking back, she might have been teasing. After all, it’s no trick to turn the faucet in such a way that you get warm water. But I remember feeling rather ashamed in that moment, because if she hadn’t mentioned anything, I wouldn’t have noticed. How many other things did she do for us that I didn’t even notice? And whenever I remember that day, I think about all the times we take the little things people do for us for granted.

Little things like making sure there’s toilet paper in the bathroom. Little things like remembering you eat tostadas instead of burritos on taco night. Maybe you’re lucky, and you have someone who makes tea or coffee for you every morning. (My mom made me a cup of tea a few weeks ago. I’m pretty sure it’s the second time in my adult life anyone’s done that for me, and it felt really nice!) Point is–can we thank those people? Because they won’t be around forever.

And can we make an effort to be the person who refills the toilet paper without complaining? Who goes the extra mile to make sure that the people around us feel loved? Starting is the hard part. Getting into a habit is easy.

What’s one nice thing you can do for someone this week? Let me know in the comments below! God bless you, dear readers, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook!