Ash Wednesday 2017: Lent with Claire, year 2

Today was Ash Wednesday, which officially begins our observance of Lent. I've written about Lent for a few years now, so anyone who has been reading for a while is familiar with the Boswell participation. I added the tag for last year's Lenten posts at the end of this one, if you want to go back and read through some of them. 

We've been planning out activities and practices to do with Claire again this year as we work through this preparation period. My plan is to write about it again each week, so hopefully, you can follow along in this year's journey. We're trying to be really thoughtful and strategic with our activity choices so that it will be age-appropriate and meaningful. Our first Lenten activity was to make a (loooong) paper chain that lasts until Easter. She responds really well to visual markers of time, so I think it will aid our daily discussions.

She attended her first Ash Wednesday service tonight, including receiving ashes. We had some really good conversations with her about Easter and Lent and the reason that we receive ashes. Those are big topics for a little girl, but she is very thoughtful and asks good (and really hard!) questions. It's definitely challenging me to think hard about my answers and creative ways to express them to Claire.

I hope we have wonderful things to share about Claire's participation in Lent this year; she's so terribly interested in spiritual matters right now, so I'm hoping this increases her knowledge and understanding. Today, we began with this...

Genesis 3:18

By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread,

til you return to the ground,

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

He is Risen indeed!

This post is definitely belated; it was supposed to go up earlier this week, but I've had a rough week. I'll fill you in sometime.

Easter came! Lent is finished, and we were able to celebrate! I hope each of you had a wonderful day celebrating the work that Jesus accomplished.

I wrote last week about how Holy Week is a pretty busy week for liturgical churches, but then I only ended up being able to participate in part of the week's events. I missed the Maundy Thursday service because of a migraine, which was disappointing. The communion liturgy always begins with "On the night He was betrayed..." so it was a little sad to miss taking communion on the symbolic night that He was betrayed. Brad and Claire went, though, which was good particularly because Claire asked me ALL DAY if she could go to church (we didn't make it to Bible study that morning because I'd had to schedule a doctor's appointment during that time, and I guess Claire needed a church fix. There are way worse things than being hounded by my daughter because she wants to go to church.). 

I did make it to the Good Friday service, though. Guys. Good Friday services are so good and so hard. I thought that Blacknall did a marvelous job with the service. One of the elements of Tenebrae (which mean "darkness," by the way) services that I find to be really moving and significant for reminding me of the weight of the crucifixion is the gradual darkening of the sanctuary as the service progresses. There are several segments of scripture readings (usually called "lessons") that track the timeline of Jesus' betrayal through his crucifixion, punctuated by either choir-led or congregational songs that correlate to the readings. The different churches we've been at over the past few years have all had their own takes on how to go through the process, and they've all been very meaningful. Blacknall did it in, what I thought was, a beautiful way. 

The choir and a group of readers were in the balcony, leaving the front of the sanctuary bare of all distractions, excepting the altar table with 7 candles. Rather than having individuals take turns reading the scripture passages, the readers took more of a "radio theater" approach, with one person reading the "narrating" segments while others voiced particular characters involved in the story. It wasn't a drama, exactly, given that they were going through the actual passages, but it did add dimension to the presentation. In between readings, a little girl would extinguish the candles (one candle per reading) and the overhead lights were dimmed a little more each time. There was also a song between each reading, either performed by the choir or sung by the congregation. After each song was a period of silence, each silence stretching longer than the last. The combination of the darkening sanctuary and the silence did so much to emphasize the heaviness of Jesus journey to the cross. 

One of the most "real" and difficult parts of the service is the passage where Pilate asks the crowds who they would like him to release, and they/we the congregation respond with, "Give us Barabbas!" "Crucify Him!" and "Let His blood be on us and on our children!" It's unbelievably humbling and difficult to interact with that passage. It's hard not to tear up when you hear yourself chanting those things in unison with a roomful of people.

After the final reading (the death of Jesus), there is no official dismissal. Just darkness. All candles extinguished, all lights turned off. Everyone is invited to sit as long as they'd like or leave whenever ready. I imagine the weightiness and sorrow of the evening would last longer if some of us didn't need to make a stop by the nursery for a pick up on the way out the door. :)

For our two years in Boston, we participated in an Easter vigil (an ancient church practice) on Saturday evening, leading into Easter Sunday, and IT WAS OUR FAVORITE THING OF THE WHOLE YEAR. I wish I could take each of you to experience it. Although, the significance of the vigil is definitely heightened by going through the somberness of Lent together. Blacknall doesn't hold a vigil but rather keeps a Silent Saturday, much like Christ Community in Jackson. It was HARD to see posts about Church of the Cross's vigil posted on social media; it's an amazingly and deeply significant element to Easter worship that we miss with ALL OF OUR HEARTS.

But then Easter morning came! And we worshiped joyfully with our new church! Claire was pumped to wear her "beautiful dress!" that my Aunt got for her and join us for the singing parts of big church. She was a doll and thoroughly enjoyed it. New Baby must have been excited, too, because I contracted throughout the. whole. service. Oof. The weather was lousy and gross, but we enjoyed our day nonetheless, including having a couple of friends over to grill that evening (it quit raining long enough for Brad to use the grill, thank goodness).

I could NOT get her to cooperate for a picture. There is just too much to look at in the sanctuary, guys.

With her Easter happies. The balloon was actually given to her by her Sunday School teachers, bless them. Balloons are only her favorite things EVER.

We also finished our Resurrection Eggs! It has been so much fun to watch Claire learn about them and enjoy going through them every day. I'm definitely looking forward to going through them again with her over the next few years and seeing how much she gleans from the process. And, as promised, here's a rundown of what she would say with each egg:

Egg 1 (leaf for Triumphal Entry): It's a leaf means HOSANYA!
Egg 2 (cracker for Last Supper): It's bread. Jesus broke it and ate it and said, "This is my body."
Egg 3 (coins for Judas' payment): It's coins. Jesus had a friend who wasn't good and gave the money back.
Egg 4 (rope for Jesus' beatings): Jesus got a lot of spankings, and it hurt very much.
Egg 5 (cloth and thorns): The thorns hurt Jesus' head very much, and the cloth was for hurt his feelings (the best we could do at explaining mockery).
Egg 6 (paper cross): It's a cross they put on Jesus' back, and it hurt him very much.
Egg 7 (nails): It's nails they put in Jesus' hands and toes. It hurt him very much.
Egg 8 (King of the Jews sign): It's a sign that says "King" and hurt his feelings (again, mockery).
Egg 9 (toothpick and sponge for spear and wine sponge): It's a sponge for him to drink. They poked him in the side.
Egg 10 (small baggie of seasonings for burial spices): They put it on his body when he was dead to smell nice.
Egg 11 (rock for the tomb): They put a rock there. And it hurt very much. (No, Claire, it didn't hurt. It was to keep his body there.)
Egg 12 (empty): Where is it? (That's the point, Bear. Jesus rose again! He wasn't there!) 

Unfortunately, the empty egg isn't terribly exciting for her yet, but hopefully, it soon will be.

Thanks for following along on our Lent and Easter journey! We really enjoyed the process and are already looking forward to next year. He is risen! Indeed.

And, some Easter snapshots for you:

Easter basket made by our lovely friend, Mrs. Romine. Isn't it beautiful? The contents include: lamby and chocolate cross from Nana + "bunny bubbles," glitter glue pens, one of those multi-color clicky pens invented by NASA (but with girly, Easter colors), Anna and Elsa bubble bath, and pipe cleaners for her craft stash. She was thrilled with everything. And I got all of it (minus the Nana items) from the Target dollar spot.

Having an absolute blast chasing her "bunny bubbles."

Her first egg-dyeing experience. She was only "meh" about the process. But she did wear the bunny ears the whole time. :)

Aunt Donna and Uncle JD sent her an Easter package! It included sparkly stickers and Minnie stickers (she looooves stickers), as well as a book about the Littlest Bunny in Tennesse. :) She had a blast practicing her carefully-honed sticker-removing skills. Y'all, this kept her occupied for at least 20 minutes.

And the day after Easter, Baby Sister's Easter basket from Mrs. Romine showed up on our doorstep! Claire was thrilled and insisted on filling it up with items she felt Baby Sister could use.

And then I found this exhibition of Claire's haberdashery skills a few days later. Happy Easter!

Lent with Claire 2016: Holy Week

We're in the midst of Holy Week right now, which is a rather big week for churches observing Lent (*understatement alert*). Holy Week consists of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday (the night Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper and was betrayed), and Good Friday, leading up to Easter Sunday. We'll be at church a lot this week. :) 

Palm Sunday was actually cold and rainy here, which was kind of a bummer. However, we had a wonderful time celebrating with our church, especially with Claire. We go to the early service (8:30) at church and then Sunday School, so we usually drop Claire off in nursery before we head into worship. For Palm Sunday, though, we took her in with us for the first part of the service, because liturgical churches do these really great processions into the sanctuary on Palm Sunday. Typically, everyone starts outside (we started in the foyer this time because of the cold and mist) with actual palm branches that everyone waves while singing and walking into the sanctuary. We did this for the very first time while living in Jackson, and man, it felt weird. And cool. But really strange. A friend of ours who had been at Christ Community for a while told us, "Yeah, it's the Sunday that we let our freak flag fly!" and I gotta say...it kind of felt like it that first year. 

However, much like everything else I've come to learn about in liturgical traditions, it's become a really special part of the process for me. My whole life, I've known about Jesus' Triumphal Entry, where the people shouted, "Hosanna!" and waved palm branches for Him. Well, now, my family does the palm branch-waving and hosanna-singing, too. With a sanctuary-ful of other folks, no matter what passers-by may be thinking. We really wanted Claire to participate, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. She knows about "hosanya" because of our Resurrection Eggs and our first Easter craft that we did. We've been talking about and singing and waving "Hosanna" for weeks! Basically, she's been training for Palm Sunday. 

Something Blacknall does on Palm Sunday that's really fun is that once you get into the sanctuary with the palm branches, you just drop them wherever you want in the aisles, which leaves it looking like what Jesus probably rode into town on. Brad and I dropped ours, but we let Claire hang onto hers until she left for nursery so that she could flail...I mean, wave...it around during the music. I had to apologize to the folks sitting behind us for the times she pegged them in the heads. Oops. They didn't mind, thankfully.

Little note: in Anglican churches (not yet sure about Presbyterian), the palm branches used for Palm Sunday are burned afterwards, and the ashes then used for the following Ash Wednesday. Isn't that interesting?

On the home front, we're still trucking along with our Resurrection Eggs, and I've really been loving it. I still don't know how much Claire is connecting with the information, but she is doing a fantastic job of remembering what each egg represents and talking about it with us. I'll try to do an update when we finish Lent and let you know what she says about each one as we go through them. I definitely want to record it for posterity because it is just so sweet.

We also finally got started on her Lent scripture memory passage. Spoiler: we won't finish before Easter Sunday. But that's ok. We'll finish it eventually! The goal was to finish up Psalm 23 (what we were working on before Lent) and then move onto her Lent scripture, but we didn't want to move on until she had a firm grip on Psalm 23. Thoroughness was the name of the game. We felt like we accomplished that, so I'm still chalking it up as a victory. However, there's a good chance we'll be working on her "Lent" scriptures into summer.

I have a few crafts/activities planned for this week to help continue building up to Easter. I think she'll really enjoy it, and I'm hoping we can have some good conversations while we work. And, I'm going to be brave and attempt dyeing eggs later in the week. Wish me luck! We'll have church services on Thursday and Friday. The Good Friday service is also called a Tenebrae service, and we're looking forward to seeing how Tenebrae is observed at Blacknall; we're familiar with how Anglican churches do it, and it is really something to be a part of. It's so somber and sad, designed to make you feel the weight of Jesus' sacrifice. It's eerily quiet. Dark. Stripped bare of any finery. You leave with such a sense of sorrow, which I find to be so beneficial in getting my heart and mind in a helpful place leading up to Easter. I find it so helpful to remember that there was SUCH sacrifice and sorrow before the great joy of Easter. I think it's easy to focus on the joy of the resurrection and not feel the intensity of the crucifixion. At least that's the case for me. Because those services are so quiet and contemplative, we'll be putting Claire in nursery, but I'm hoping we can have some good conversations about things at other times during the week.

I usually strongly disapprove of using phones in church, but I NEEDED to get a little shot of Claire with her branch. And also, Brad is giving me the side-eye. Whatever. I love this picture.

One of our "crafts" this week was making a simple lamb garland for our mantle (since she loved the Valentine's Day garland so much). In the Brassart house growing up, Easter always equaled lambs, not bunnies, so we're carrying that over quite a bit in the Boswell house. Jesus: the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

I had a few packs of die-cut sheep that my mom had sent me a while back that I punched holes in. I then showed Claire how to thread yarn through the holes, which she LOVED doing. 

Finished product! It's been up for less than 48 hours, and she's already asked to look at/touch/talk about "those lambs" a dozen times. Definitely a good "craft" choice! (Even if our living room looks kind of like a preschool Sunday school classroom...)

I'll be back with more updates about Holy Week and Easter over the next few days. And then, we'll buckle down around here and get ready for this baby! 

Lent with Claire 2016: Not on top of all the things this week.

Well, things didn't go as planned this week. I'm a planner/scheduler/rule-follower/creature-of-habit, so I tend to get pretty frustrated when my plans and schedules don't go according to my original plan. The thing I have to keep in mind is that they're just my plans and aren't really worth being frustrated over. My ideal plan for each week of Lent is to be orderly and consistent with our Resurrection Eggs, do a meaningful craft with Claire, and get to the Lent dinner and service at church. So far, that list has looked like this this week:

1. Resurrection Eggs: behind
2. Meaningful craft: didn't really work out
3. Church: didn't happen for me

Oof. I hate not being able to check things off my list...but that's a dumb reason to be frustrated or lose focus. Especially for an important "project" like striving to teach my daughter spiritual lessons and disciplines in the time leading up to Easter. The heart of the matter is so much more important than the completed tasks. And, when I step back and look at the bigger picture, I see that we didn't really get off track at all:

1. Resurrection Eggs: Brad has quite a few nighttime school things (which I rather hate), and I don't like to introduce new eggs without him. So, we've ended up a little further behind on introducing new eggs than I intended. HOWEVER, Claire is still quite enamored with the eggs and has a great capacity for remembering the meanings. Two of our most recent eggs were representing Jesus' beating and the crown of thorns. She has been so sad about Jesus being hurt and "having his feelings hurt" (ahem...being mocked). She asks questions about it and says, "That makes me feel sad." This being the case, I'm not too sad that we're behind- if she's getting it on some level and feeling the sadness that we should be feeling. Victory!

2. Meaningful craft: I attempted to do a watercolor craft where I taped a paper cross template to a piece of card stock with the goal of her painting over it (so that when I untaped the cross, there would be a white cross surrounded by pretty watercolors). Well, she only really wanted to paint on the cross template. It looks pretty janky, but she had a really fun time, and we talked about how crosses represent Jesus' love for us. Victory!

Craft. It's...uh...something, right?

You can't really tell, but she's waving around her Hosanya leaf craft and singing "Hosanna." 

3. Church: I have been dealing with Braxton Hicks this week (not the false labor kind- the super uncomfortable tightening stomach kind) that happens every time I move at all and lots of round ligament pain. I haven't been getting around very well, if we're being honest. Come church time last night, I was laying on the couch with four pillows and a heating pad. Claire and Brad headed off to church without me, which was a little disappointing. However. The good news is that Claire was EXCITED about going to church, which is such a huge improvement for us as a family! Brad was able to chat with some of the folks we've been meeting over the past few weeks, reminding me that we're starting to make some headway in making Blacknall our home. Plus, resting on the couch without being needed for any reason was helpful. Victories!

Although things did not go as planned, I'm pretty pleased with how things ended up. I'm encouraged by what Claire is learning (and by the way, we've started on her Lent scripture- finally) and am excited about what she will have learned by the time Easter arrives.

Lent with Claire 2016: Jesus was hurt...um...very badly

We've only added one new egg from our set of Resurrection Eggs since last week: egg 4, which is a small piece of twine, representing the whip(s) used to beat Jesus. Finding ways to explain to a newly-turned 3-year-old the concept of Jesus being flogged is sort of bizarre. Do we talk about it in terms of spankings? That doesn't seem that it would convey much to Claire, as she doesn't really get spankings. Occasionally a pop on the hand, but that's not going to give her a good idea of Jesus' whipping. Do we tell her Jesus got a lot of boo-boos? That doesn't seem very adequate either. We've talked about it by explaining that Jesus was hurt very badly and would have needed a lot of band-aid stickers (what she calls band-aids) because he was bleeding. So, our explanation feels a little faltering, as we try to give her an idea of what He experienced. Hopefully, we'll refine it over time, but until then, we'll keep trying to give her word pictures that she might understand. Anybody else have ideas?

Stretching the Resurrection Eggs out throughout the entirety of Lent is still working well for us, as we get to spend several days going over the meanings of each one. She still enjoys recounting the first few eggs every day:
1. The Palm Branch (ahem...leaf from yard). She likes to sing "Hosanna" and wave the palm branch she made. 
2. The Bread (oyster cracker). She explains that Jesus took the bread, broke it, and ate it.
3. The coins. She holds the coins and explains that Jesus had a friend "who wasn't very nice" (that's about as good as we've gotten with the Judas/30 pieces of silver egg).

She's still showing a lot of interest in the eggs that we haven't opened yet, and she asks every day if we can "talk about those eggs?" 

We're still enjoying the Wednesday night Lent services at church. Blacknall doesn't have regular Wednesday night services, and, compared to Sunday attendance, draws a fairly smallish crowd. We've really enjoyed sitting with different couples/individuals/families at dinner every time. This week, we sat by a young family who are in the final stages of completing their second international adoption. It was so interesting to hear their story of how they chose the agency they're working with, how they chose the country they're adopting from, and about their son that they are waiting on. They are literally waiting on one more signature before they can travel for a week of court dates in-country. It's exciting to start praying for them as they are waiting for and anticipating their son, much like we're all waiting for and anticipating Easter at the end of Lent. It's been so neat to see the folks that the Lord has brought into our Wednesday evening paths. 

After the meal each week, there is a short worship service, message, and communion. It's been very encouraging each week, and there's something really special about sharing a meal together before sharing the Lord's Supper together. Brad always says that there's just something about sharing a meal that draws people together (Baptists totally get this), so sharing a meal for sustenance followed by a meal of significance is a really great way to wrap up the day. And, thank goodness Claire has done a complete 180 on the staying-in-nursery-front. She's excited about going to church these days, and it's enabling us to participate in normal, church family activities. It is LIFE CHANGING, I tell you. 

We haven't done an Easter craft yet this week, and don't think for a second that Claire hasn't noticed. If I get my act together, I'll tell you about what we came up with.

Lent with Claire 2016: Hosanyah!

Since my last update on observing Lent with Claire, we've added a few more symbols to our Resurrection Eggs repertoire. She's been dying to open all of the eggs and asks about it daily, but so far, we're still sticking to the plan of having her wait as we open them one at a time and spend a few days going over each one. But, we have added the second egg (an oyster cracker representing the Lord's Supper) and the third egg (a few quarters representing the silver that Judas was paid to betray Jesus). I was really excited on the night that we introduced the second egg (after spending about 3 days on the first) when Claire held the cracker in her hand and immediately asked, "What does it mean?" It let me know that she understood that each of the things inside the eggs represent something. I don't know how much she understands of our explanations, but she's connecting on at least some level, which is very encouraging. In fact, last night, I asked her what she remembered about the bread, and she said, "Jesus broke it and ate it!" Very true (well, with a few other details).

Oh! The "palm branch" craft that we made last week has been waved enthusiastically as we talk about the eggs every day. She has totally been into that. Note to self: Claire really likes crafts. We did another craft this week, although it didn't tie in directly with any of our new eggs, unlike the palm branch of last week. I chose to do a really basic, paper plate lamb. We talked about how Jesus is the Lamb of God, and she thoroughly enjoyed gluing cotton balls and googly eyes onto the plate. I had told her earlier in the day that we would make a lamb after her nap...only to have the afternoon thrown into a tizzy, thanks to a tornado blowing through (??). But, that's a story for another day. All you need to know for the purposes of this post is that we made our lamby craft while sitting right next to a window (after the storms had blown over) so that we could see; we lost power during the storm, but Claire was determined that we were going to make her lamb.

Sorry about the lighting...power outage.

I might have made life more difficult for myself early on in this Resurrection Egg process: when we first talked about the "palm branch" (leaf from the yard) and how the people said, "Hosanna!" (Claire says "hosanyah") as Jesus rode into town, on a whim, I sang a song that we've sung in our past two churches on Palm Sunday. She loved it and asks for it during our times talking about the eggs, as well as at nap time. But then, she kind of expected a song for egg #2 (bread). I drew a total blank and couldn't think of anything. Brad stepped up on that one, though, and started singing a song that our Boston church used to sing after communion each week, which has a verse about the bread. I'm not sure how long we can keep up the song element (especially for things like the wine-soaked sponge?)...if anyone has any ideas, please chime in!

We've also been consistent in reading through the Lent reading plan for the Jesus Storybook Bible. Claire has been much more involved in the process than she has been in the past, which is simultaneously great and a little wearying. It's wearying in the sense that her "involvement" involves a lot of talking over us while we're reading, pointing out things that she sees in the pictures, interpreting what she thinks is going on, and repeating parts of the story that stuck out to her. The night we read the story of Joseph ("Jofuss") and his brothers, she was FIXATED on the illustration of Pharaoh dreaming about the cows. She kept talking about how he was "so scary of those cows, Mommy, he's so scary of them!" And, when reading about Moses and the Plagues, she could not stop touching and commenting on the pictures of the "ants" and "bees" (flies and locusts). Stopping to acknowledge her comments yields absolutely no results, so pressing forward really is the best plan. Brad is good at this. I am not. Bless us all.

We have plans to introduce her to a new-to-her passage of scripture to memorize especially for Lent, but we're still finishing out the 23rd Psalm, so we'll see how that plan goes. We're having some trouble with "surely, goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life." No idea why.

So far, I am so pleased with how our Lent plans are playing out. She really seems to be connecting with what we're doing, as well as enjoying it. I'm hoping that we're able to encourage her involvement and enthusiasm over the next few weeks!

Lent with Claire 2016: Resurrection Eggs

I mentioned in my Ash Wednesday post that we're attempting to do some Lent activities with Claire this year. It's such an experiment for us, given that she's a toddler (which = completely unpredictable), but we're going for it. I thought I'd document our progress along the way for you. Who knows what that will end up looking like... 

We're loosely following this Lent reading plan with Bear from the Jesus Storybook Bible. Note: if you have any kiddos in your life who don't have this children's Bible, I highly recommend it! We really like it (and so does Claire). We've given it to a few friends because we like it so much. One of the taglines is that it "whispers His name on every page," which it absolutely does. We love how it is so intentional about connecting every single story to Jesus and God's plan for us. We're actually on track with our readings (you know, 7 days in...yay us!), and Claire is sitting still and interacting with the stories so far, which is better than we got around Advent, so I'll take it.

One of the activities I knew I wanted to try this year was one that's been around for a long time: Resurrection Eggs. I decided to follow this template and started collected items from around the house to fill our eggs. The template includes little printable Bible verses from a children's translation of the Bible to go in each egg, which is nice. Classic Resurrection Eggs are comprised of 12 plastic Easter eggs, each filled with small symbols representing the parts of the Easter story. Technically, you're supposed to start these 12 days before Easter, opening the last one (the empty one- for the empty tomb!) on Easter morning. But, since our goal is to drive home the Easter story during Lent and because our child is so young, we decided to start this week, spending a few days on each egg. The theory is that the repetition of doing the same egg a few nights in a row will help her remember them as we move forward. 

The collecting process. You can kind of spy some of my supplies in the cups of my egg plate: an oyster cracker to represent the bread of the Last Supper, a stone from the tomb, a toothpick as the spear used to pierce Jesus' side, nails from the cross, purple cloth and a strip of thorns. I was able to find everything in our home or yard, which was really nice. 

And this is front and center on our dining room table until Easter (although I may have to transfer the eggs to another holding receptacle when we dye eggs closer to Easter...).

The first egg we opened has a small leaf in it (I snagged it from a rose bush in front of our house), representing the palm branches used during the Triumphal Entry. We did the most simplified explanation you could possibly imagine and sang a "Hosanna" song. It didn't mean anything to Claire, but we'll continue doing it anyway. She was extremely interested in our platter of eggs, picking up each one and gently shaking to see if she could guess what was inside (we told her we can only open one at a time. Lent is a season of waiting, so it seems appropriate for her to practice that discipline, too.). She is very much looking forward to finding out what is in each one, so I'm hopeful that this will end up being a good learning experience.

I also decided to try to do a Easter-related craft with Claire each week, since our first cra(p)ft went so well. I thought she might be able to connect with the symbols inside the eggs better if we did something fun and hands-on that related. Because the first egg has a leaf symbolizing the Triumphal Entry, I decided that we'd make a "palm branch" for Claire to wave around when we talk about it. I glanced at a construction paper "template" on Pinterest and free-handed one to cut out of card stock. Then, I braved the world of watercolors, and we painted it. Claire likes painting, so I figured she'd enjoy that part (which she did). We've been singing a "Hosanna" song when we talk about Egg #1, so now we have a bigger leaf to wave while we sing.

She thoroughly enjoyed painting her leaf.

And, for anyone still interested in some Lenten reflections, might I suggest the daily updates from our Boston church, Church of the Cross? Different members of the church are asked to reflect on particular passages of scripture everyday throughout Lent. Brad wrote a few while we lived there, and I always enjoyed reading different church members' perspectives. They're short and sweet, so it's not a big commitment or anything.

I'm going to try to post a Lent with Claire update (or something in that vein) every week. Assuming that the system doesn't completely break down and turn into nothing. I think it will be nice to have a record of it to look back on by the end of the year. Hope you enjoy!

Ash Wednesday

Brad and I have been part of church communities that observe Ash Wednesday (and Lent) for the past 5 years, and this 6th year is no different. I've mentioned in passing that we've (finally) landed on a church in Durham, and unlike our previous churches in our married life, this one is not actually Anglican or Anglican-esque (smiling at you, Christ Community). We're currently worshiping at a Presbyterian church (a first for both of us), which also observes Lent.

Tonight, we participated in our 6th Ash Wednesday service, and yet again, it was such a meaningful way to start this journey towards Easter. I've written several times over the past few years about how the observance of Lent has deeply impacted me, so I won't wax eloquent about it today. I'll just say that every year that I participate in Lent along with the church community we're a part of, I reap such unexpected benefits in my life as a believer. It's not accurate to say that I "look forward" to Lent, because who really likes giving up something in order to focus on something more important? Or spending a great deal of time meditating on hard things and things that are uncomfortable parts of life? Those are inconvenient and uncomfortable things to do. But through those things, I continually find that my relationship to God and His Church is incredibly strengthened and fortified.

Claire is old enough this year to more actively participate in lenten activities, so we've been putting some thought into how we want to approach that with her. It's a tricky thing- trying to figure out how to convey the meaning of lent and what it is building up to to a 2-almost-3-year-old. She's starting to understand who Jesus is/the role He plays in our life and really enjoyed going through the elements of the Christmas story during Advent. Easter, on the other hand, is a little more complicated to explain, don't you think? I've been praying about it and charting out some ideas and activities for a few weeks now, and Brad and I have picked out some scripture we want to work on with her. She seems to really enjoy learning scripture, and while we realize that she doesn't understand all or even most of what she's reciting, we can't help but trust that it will stick with her on some level. So, we're heading into this unknown (for us) territory and praying for positive results. I'll try to post about this journey with Claire as it plays out. I'm sure it will be quite an experience.

If anyone who isn't observing Lent with their church communities is interested in "participating" in a kind of way, I highly recommend following along with the daily readings prepared by She Reads Truth (girls) or He Reads Truth (guys). I've followed She Reads Truth for several years now, and I particularly appreciate their Lent studies. There are daily scriptures followed by a very brief devotion, along with scripture that participants are encouraged to commit to memory. Also, give them a follow on Instagram, if you're an Instagrammer (@shereadstruth). It's just so full of encouragement and helpful reminders.

I just washed the ash from this evening off of my forehead, remembering its significance as a reminder of my mortality and my need for a Savior. What a sobering thought to take with me into this time of preparation for Easter.

Genesis 3:18

By the sweat of your face

you shall eat bread,

till you return to the ground,

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust,

and to dust you shall return.”