The year: 2020. The holiday: Easter.
Spring 2020 was not fun for anyone, and our little Roberts family was no exception. My grandmother had passed away in March, we were unable to hold a funeral, and we were unable to gather together as a family to mourn her loss. My husband and I were trying to do the work from home thing while making sure our kids didn’t fall behind in school.
We, like other parents, were trying to survive in unprecedented times. We were trying to find a normal in the unusual, an ordinary in the very extraordinary. We had some good moments for sure, and I absolutely don’t want to discount those. But it was such an odd time, and nothing seemed more uncertain than when we all celebrated our first major holiday apart from our community.
As Easter came around that year, we tried to make it as special and normal as possible. The Easter Bunny came and left Easter baskets for the girls on Saturday (our Easter bunny visits on Saturday each year), and we prepared for church the next day. The girls and I wore our Easter dresses that we had purchased before the start of quarantine, and we took a family picture using a timer, but things were different. We watched church on TV. We didn’t get together with family or friends for Easter lunch. Heck, I don’t think we even wore shoes that day.
Oh – and our yard was egged.
No, not like the egging you did in high school (because I would never, ever do something like egg a person’s house, no, no sir, never ever), but Easter egged. We woke up Easter morning and my girls saw bright, shiny eggs in our front yard and a note on our door: “You’ve been egged! There are 12 eggs hidden in your yard! Enjoy the hunt, but don’t be discouraged when you find the empty egg. It is a simple reminder of Jesus’s empty tomb, for He is risen!”
What a glorious, much needed reminder of what Easter is about – not what’s going on in the world, not what’s even going on in our little world, but what is truly the message for the Easter season: He is risen indeed.
I didn’t know who had hidden the eggs in our yard or even when. My husband and I were absolutely flabbergasted and had some theories, and we simply enjoyed the moment as the girls rushed out to hunt for the Easter eggs that had been placed in our yard. It was this magical moment in season that didn’t seem very magical at all.
It took me a couple of weeks to find out it was my friend Brandi and her family who had snuck in our yard the night before to hide the eggs. She said her kids were giggling and enjoyed themselves tremendously as they hurried around, hiding eggs for their friends to find in the morning. It was such a simple, sweet gesture that, in a time when community seemed so far away, reminded us that we were not alone.
