I don’t consider myself to be a very religious person. It has taken me some time to get to this place in my life where I am even comfortable talking about my walk with God. In honor of Easter Sunday, however, I thought I would put down the Peeps, Peanut Butter Cups, Jelly Belly’s, and chocolate coins for a split second to actually reflect on why this year, Easter is more than sugar candies, fancy church clothes and a big ol‘ ham at dinner.

For a long time, pretty much most of my adolescence and into college, I went to church because that’s what you did in my family on Sundays, unless you were my dad. He got to sleep in since he commuted into the city 5 days a week. So, I went to church, I was an acolyte, I sang with the congregation and recited prayers without really understanding what any of it meant. I just did it. And then, maybe about my senior year in college, I said, “Enough,”. I felt like a giant hypocrite. I was reciting things from memory that had no weight for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God, I just didn’t believe in the words. How could I recite the Nicene Creed when, in my mind, it meant the same thing to me as saying the Girl Scout Promise? It just didn’t have a strength for me. I was going to church, I was doing church related activities because I had been told to, not because it really meant anything for me.

As soon as I was able to do so without fear of chastisement, I stopped going. I considered myself a believe in God, but that I didn’t have to go to church to believe. It was all so confusing for a while. Then one Sunday, when I was about 21 or 22, I decided to go to church. I went to an Episcopal church in Laurel, MD, and just sat in the back. I didn’t pick up a hymnal or a prayer book. I didn’t participate except for standing and kneeling at the appropriate times, but I didn’t speak, or move my lips. I can’t even remember what the lessons were about, what the gospel was about, but I do know that I was silently crying through out. I saw how the Word had filled the other congregants and how, to a some degree, it was filling me, despite my lack of participation. It was so great, I could do nothing but cry silently. I think that was when I first set my foot on the path to knowing God, to wanting a relationship with God.

Let’s fast forward about 7 years. I’m a wife and mother now. My priorities have shifted considerably. My path towards God has been a slow one, but I had been walking it. There have been some obstacles in the road, issues I’ve had to sort through on my own and with the help of others. I’ve read books, I’ve prayed — not as consistently as I would like to, but I’ve done it. I’ve taken a class, I’ve talked with other about how to reach my goal and asked others to pray for me about it. I’m constantly walking and working. I joined a church and had to confess that I accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior, which was one of the most daunting and wrenching obstacle in my path that I had to cross. I’m a controller, a realist, I want to know “why” and “how come” and religion is faith based.

Someone likened my experience, my reaching my goal to the descent of a rock climber down a mountain. I probably won’t convey it as elegantly as he did, but in a nutshell, when a climber has reached the peak and is ready to begin their descent, they have to rappel down the face of the mountain. It’s the first step that is the most difficult. Imagine being up high, high, high, with nothing but cables, carabiners, and air between you and the ground. In order to get their, (in a addition to a few other things, but I’m no rock climber) you have to hang your heels off of the cliff, fall back and let go into the great expanse in order to plant your feet onto the solid surface of the rock face below. The person giving me this example said how he’d seen grown men, big burly guys, wet their pants before mustering up the nerve to get down. There are so many different, God centered conclusions to this little vignette — you know, saying how one should just let go and let God, or no matter from where you fall, God will catch you, and so on. But for me, at that particular time, it wasn’t that I doubted I would be caught. It was the hanging, falling, letting go. Giving up what I could control.

And here we are, Easter Sunday, which is kind of redundant to some degree, but then I think there is also Easter Monday. I digress. Easter Sunday, the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical calendar, celebrating the resurrection of Christ. With the Easter season, also comes spring and the ideas of birth, rejuvenation and renewal. With that in mind, I am going to renew my beliefs in God and renew my understanding of the true meaning the holiday, even if it means letting my heels hang off the edge to do so.

Happy Easter to you and yours.