Easter Sunday

We spent yesterday fishing on small ponds at the Charlie Elliot Wildlife Center.  If you have never visited, you will know that it is a beautiful preserve that features multiple ponds for fishing, hunting spaces, and other activities for families, which in our case includes birding.  In the silence of Saturday that rests between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we spent the day outside in the glory of creation fishing and barely got a nibble.

It is our luck to struggle to catch any fish.  In multiple family outings, we have reeled in fewer than five fish.  My superstitious self, I did play baseball for twelve after all, thinks it might be me.  Other dads take their families fishing and have a great time hauling in the catch.  Maybe it is the bait; maybe it is the constant commotion that is our family of six; maybe the fish know when we arrive and agree to leave our hooks alone.  I consoled myself yesterday by noting that no one else appeared to be bringing much in the way of dinner either.

And yet, we spent time as a family out of the house and doing something we love.  This past week has been full of uncertainty and emotional pain.  Grief touched our home during holy week, and we headed into Maundy Thursday with as much of a sense of suffering and abandonment as any previous holy week.  We have made it through to Easter morning, but we are forever on this side of resurrection.  The silence of Saturday reminds us that even though we live on this side of Easter we live in-between something that has come and something that is still to come.  On Saturday, we waited patiently for fish that never took the bait.  We'll continue fishing, waiting.