Stocking feet, face illumined with indefatigable joy, this photo of my daughter from nearly a year ago reminds me what it's all for. Everything.
She’s hunting eggs on Easter Day. But I see so much more than her excitement over finding pastel candy-filled, hollowed-out ovals. I see an extraordinary exuberance for the mere quest of unseen treasure. I also see a little girl who believes that her parents were truthful - that our promise of hidden treasure is honorable. There's no doubt on that face. There’s no "but did God really say..." in her demeanor.
I'd like to think that in my little girl's face, I see what Eve could have been... what she would have been, had she chosen to trust her Father over the lies of the Deceiver.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and as always, the service and imposition of ashes on my forehead was deeply moving. But I experienced something new last night.
My children are old enough now to participate in many of the liturgies of the church service. So as we walked up the aisle to receive the ashes, I was taken by surprise when my priest spoke to my young children as if they were adults. My daughter was first: "Remember, oh woman, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return."
Woman?
She looked back at me with excitement after receiving the shape of a cross on her forehead. I returned her smile with an affirming one of my own. And then it was my turn. I struggled to meet the priest's eyes as he looked into mine, lifted his ash-stained thumb and repeated, "Remember, oh woman, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return." I was woman. I was dust. It was sobering.
But as I followed my children back to our pew but couldn't stop thinking about how my six and eight-year-old children were called "man" and "woman". It wasn’t just my identity that was called to mind in that moment, it was my children’s. In that split second at the altar, all the layers of childhood were shed before my eyes and suddenly I glimpsed my children not just as the young dependents that they are, but as citizens of a Kingdom whose King was calling them to remember that they belong in His courts.
It didn't matter how old my children were in this temporal second among all immeasurable seconds this universe has beheld. In Kingdom time, they are already fully man and fully woman, and their God calls to them from a place I cannot go. They are being summoned to remember who they are, so that they can choose to follow the narrow path that leads to the treasure none of us can fathom. Jellybeans and m&m’s pale in its light, and yet even candy has a place in reminding us what the true treasure is. Every jelly bean, every taste of joy my daughter pursues is teaching her, (and reminding me), that after Lent, is Easter: after death, is eternal life.
My children belong to a story I cannot quite wrap my mind around, and stumbling upon this picture today caught me by surprise. I felt nostalgia, yes, but also hope, and my own sense of joy knowing that one day, if I can just hold on, I will wear this same expression of indefatigable joy; my confidence in my Holy Father's faithfulness will be as evident my daughter’s faith in her parents’ promise of sugary treats at the end of her quest.
I won't pretend to know where my journey ends beyond returning to dust, or what twists and turns my own "treasure-hunt" will take. But this little picture and yesterday’s Ash Wednesday service encouraged me to remember that I, like my daughter, am both woman and dust, and though "to dust I shall return," the Eternal Easter will come again with the dawn. And in that dawn, the spark of ecstasy buried deep within my chest will ignite into an unquenchable flame. And then, by the grace of God, my children, my husband and I will all wear an expression of unbeleaguered joy as we run, like my precious daughter, towards the Treasure whose value far exceeds any that Jellybeans and m&m’s can offer.
And yet I thank God for those little candies and the reminder they provide. Run my little daughter. Run, my son – your God is calling you. And I’m running right beside you.