Easter Struggles

I know I blogged about struggling with Christmas back in December.  I struggled just as much with Easter this year.  Last year, we had our traditional Easter egg hunt for the kids, but this year I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  A few reasons:

1) We ended up painting our old house all weekend - including Sunday - and CP and I were exhausted.  When you homeschool, you have to take advantage of the opportunities that you have.  If CP isn't around, the kids tend to get sidetracked very easily and don't finish their work on time.

2)  I just don't think that Jesus would want us remembering his death and resurrection by hiding a bunch of eggs for our kids to find.  These holiday traditions really have nothing to do with what the day is about.  I read somewhere this weekend that we get the name Easter from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring and Dawn - Eostre.  Also, the tradition of rabbits and eggs come from a story associated with Eostre. 

So we decided that we would celebrate Jesus giving his life for us by giving back to those in our community.  We went to a local church that serves the homeless lunch every Sunday. We did this two years ago and had an AWESOME time.  We were planning on helping out with serving, but when we got there they had SO many people helping that we ended up deciding to just go back home. 

I was truly surprised that on Easter they had so many people helping.  What was somewhat even more surprising was that the group responsible for helping that week was from a local company.  Not a church - a business. 

On a friend's blog, I read about another adoptive family's celebration of Easter.  I LOVE what they were able to do with their church.  I would SO love to find a church in our area that thinks this way.  So far, we haven't found one.

I am continuing to look for ways to instill in my children that after we become Christ followers, that we are to be His hands and feet to the world around us.  Yes, I realize we do that 24/7 with 3 kids from another culture in our home, but we can do more.  The struggle is in finding the time.  We spend too much time doing things for us;  we need to figure out how to spend more time doing things for others.