The weekend

After April 15

After about the first of April every year, it didn’t much matter what you asked for.  It might be a new record or socks or just about anything.  The answer was always, “After April 15.”  It was like a mantra, and life sort of came to a standstill until After April 15.

During the San Antonio years, which started in 1967, Mom and Dad both did taxes for H&R Block.  Dad was, by profession, an accountant.  Mom had started as a math checker when we lived in Charleston.  (Kind of hard to imagine in this day and age what a math checker did!)  But in San Antonio, Mom took the tax preparers’ course at Block, and was soon doing taxes too, eventually serving as manager of the main office in San Antonio.

Mom worked every day and Dad would work about one night a week after he got off work.  Around the first of April, Dad would take a couple weeks off his regular job and work taxes every day.  It was hard to make ends meet, and every little bit helped.

By the first of April, things were just crazy.  Mom and Dad were both working full tilt, and the three of us kids were mostly unattended.  Meals were quick and household cleanliness and laundry took a nosedive.  I say that rather sheepishly, because I was old enough to have been much more help, but not mature enough to know it yet.

I don’t know anyone else who got presents for April 15.  And maybe it only happened once; I’m not sure.  But I know at least once, we all got presents for April 15, which was Mom & Dad’s way of thanking us for hanging in there through that very busy time.

For fun

Easter Memories

My earliest Easter memories involve the clothes.  There was always a new dress, often matching for my sister and me.  And new white shoes and a purse, even before I was old enough to need a purse.  White shoes were never worn until Easter, whether Easter was in March or April.  There were Easter baskets with candy when I was small, but  I don’t remember that being a very big part of Easter.  I’m sure there were Easter egg hunts too, though I don’t have a clear memory of that either.

I remember that Dad bought Mom a corsage for Easter Sunday.  One time, there were corsages for Nancy and me too.

Easter songs fill my memories. . . “Low in the grave He lay. . .” and “Christ the Lord is risen today!”

As I grew into a teenager, I remember the Gaithers’ “Because He Lives.”  I remember sunrise services as we hurried about in the cool darkness of morning.  We wondered what the women felt like as they approached the tomb to care for Jesus’ body.

I remember sharing Easter eggs with my own children, teaching them about the Resurrection.

Growing up in the church, the story of the death and resurrection of Christ is foundational and familiar.  We were reminded in every baptism (“buried with Him in baptism, raised to walk in newness of life.”) and every Communion service(“this do in remembrance of Me.”)  

We were reminded in every evangelical appeal (“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. . . ") and every call to repentance ("He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin.”)

As a child, I don’t suppose you usually think much about death.  Even as an adult, not having to face my own mortality head on very often, I haven’t given it a great deal of thought.  But sometimes, the death of someone you love smacks you in the face.  Then you cling to the Resurrection hope.  

Death has been swallowed up in victory
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?

Death did not have the final say with Christ.  And it will not have the final say with us either.  

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

My favorite Easter song (still!)

High noon in the valley of the shadow 
When the deep of the valley was bright 
When the mouth of the tomb 
Shouted, "Glory, the Groom is alive" 
So long, you wages of sin 
Go on, don't you come back again 
I've been raised and redeemed 
You've lost all your sting 
To the victor of the battle 
At high noon in the valley 
In the valley of the shadow 

Now the demons, they danced in the darkness 
When that last ragged breath left his lungs 
And they reveled and howled 
At the war that they thought they had won 
But then, in the dark of the grave 
The stone rolled away 
In the still of the dawn on the greatest of days 

High noon in the valley of the shadow 
When the shadows were shot through with light 
When Jesus took in that breath 
And shattered all Death with his life 
So long, you wages of sin 
Go on, don't you come back again 
I've been raised and redeemed 
You've lost all your sting 
To the victor of the battle 
High noon in the valley of the shadow 

Let the people rejoice 
Let the heavens resound 
Let the name of Jesus, who sought us 
And freed us forever ring out 
All praise to the fighter of the night 
Who rides on the light 
Whose gun is the grace of the God of the sky 

High noon in the valley of the shadow 
When the shadows were shot through with light 
When the mouth of the tomb 
Shouted, "Glory, the Groom is alive" 
So long, you wages of sin 
I said go on, don't you come back again 
I've been raised and redeemed 
All praise to the king 
The victor of the battle 
High noon in the valley 
In the valley of the shadow