The beginning of Easter Vigil Mass at St. Peter the Apostle University & Community Parish, New Brunswick, NJ. Taken April 4, 2015 © mithriluna.wordpress.com. All Rights Reserved

 

The past few weeks have been a challenge since my surgery three weeks ago and a procedure two weeks before that.

But then Easter came and I felt a triumphal exuberance welling up in my spirit.  At church, when the choir started singing “Alleluia!”, I literally cried tears of gratitude.

Most of the forty days of Lent were forty days of illness, pain, fear, and uncertainty.  Forty daily struggles in finding gratitude and peace.  Yet to my amazement, I found plenty of things to be grateful for.  Those forty days were certainly filled with many lessons on perseverance, courage, faith, and hope.  Particularly,  in humility and vulnerability – lessons on squashing my pride and admitting my need for help.  Admittance that I can’ t do things on my own – the importance of listening to my caregivers (many times they were my own children) and following direction.  All those lessons learned during those forty days contributed to my path to complete recovery – a journey of which I am still on but feel near completion.

So with a joyful song in my heart and tears of gratitude, I am thankful.  I made it through (again).

On the third day, the friends of Christ, coming at daybreak to the place, found the grave empty, and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool, not of the evening, but of the dawn.

– G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

If you would like to share your version of “Thankful Thursday” (photos or text or both) today or in the future, you can link your post to my post on Thursdays in the comments section. Happy Easter Everyone!

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