I celebrated last Sunday with my husband and two kids at church. We ate breakfast at church and met some friends at the pool in the late afternoon. We laid in the sun, splashed in the pool, and meandered back home. My husband got us take out for dinner, and we all Skyped with my in-laws. It was a low key holiday. And that’s one of the reasons I love Easter so much.

Easter’s just not like Christmas, the flashier uber holiday of the church year. There are six weeks of Lenten reflection in the deep of winter, one Holy Week on the verge of spring, and then, with plenty of time to prepare, Easter arrives. It’s not at all like Christmas, smooshed into the craziness of the December holidays, which always comes too soon.

I don’t decorate for Easter. I don’t got crazy shopping or cooking. We buy a few treats for the Easter baskets, hide them the night before, and call it a day. We’ll dye a few eggs and find our citywide egg hunt one Saturday. When I cook, but we usually grill out, but this year we got take out. We don’t travel either. Sometimes we’ll have visitors from up north, but usually it’s just the four of us, going to church and taking a nice long nap afterwards.

During Christmas, I seek out calm and serenity. For Lent, it seems to find me. This Christmas I wrote a blog every day to force my attention to the right place. During Lent, I just kind of sat with my thoughts and the blogging lagged.

Christmas’s arrival is the grand finale of anticipation and excitement. I find myself wound up and exhausted afterwards. While Easter brings relief and peace, a wellspring of comfort and quiet to me.

I imagine the scene for myself: The dusky dawn of a Sunday morning, the women wrung out and bone tired from the weekend, but quietly slipping through the streets to a dewy garden. Ready to prepare the body, their arms were full of spices and perfumes. When they arrive at the tomb, they find a surprising scene: no body. My reaction would have been the same as theirs: Who has stolen the Lord’s body? And then an even more startling scene: the angels appearance. He is not here? He has risen? They run back to retrieve the disciples, who find the same scene and walk away puzzled.

Except Mary Magdalene. Full of sadness and confusion, she remains there, in the garden by herself. A quiet place. A place for mourning and reflecting, wondering and weeping.

Until the gardener finds her and asks her why she is crying. She looks up in desperate hope: could you have taken my Lord? If you have, please, show me where.

And one word ushers in relief and joy, unfathomable surprise and a daring, surging hope:

Mary.

Her name. Her Lord. Her hope. Her joy.

Rabboni!

And in the quietness of this place, joy rushes forward, tumbles over, and flows in unrestrained. Confusion is still abundant, but over-ridden. Jesus is alive. All is well with our souls.

This unexpected bliss comes on the heels of so much pain, on the heels of death. And it is the same for us. This Easter bliss, the promise of own resurrection and eternal life, comes on the heels of our own pains and deaths. This Easter bliss is our only balm the morning after the deaths of those we love, in the dawn of pain and trial and temptation. And finally, this Easter bliss is the only thing we will hang onto in our final moments, the moment the sun sets on this life and rises in the next.

In that new morning, when I step into that garden, I hope and anticipate one word:

Dana.

From the mouth of my Lord. I have never seen him, this man who would look like a stranger to me, but when he says my name I will know him as my Rabboni, too. My Jesus still the same.

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another. How my heart yearns withine me! Job 19:25-27