Easter, Palm Sunday, Good Friday and birth

The church year calendar is different than our calendar and therefore Easter, Palm Sunday, Good Friday... fall on different dates each year. Therefore I have had the privilege of being born on Palm Sunday, having had my birthday on Easter more than once, and generally experiencing this season as one of "birth". If you add to that, the fact that April is often the birth of spring, you find me in a very birth-centric season right now.

I love that I can tie my journey into the church year and this season. And I'm sure there's more depths to plum in the context of who I am, how my birth lines up with the church year, and how that's shaped me.

My birthday is not for another week but I have been thinking about birth a lot lately. Not because of my birthday, which I always find to be a fun time to "create my own event", but because of all the other births going on in me. Plus, in an hour I'm going to a baby shower for a very pregnant friend. :)

This year I'm linking my own physical birth to the births of new things that have happened in me this year. It's been a HUGE life altering year to be sure! And it seems to me that birth is really the only metaphor that works.

Before my mother birthed me she worked with babies as a nurse. She knew about birth and how hard it can be. She hoped for an easy birth with me (her first child) and she got it. I was just over five pounds, she needed no drugs, I was born in 45 minutes, and she describes my birth as easy and it seems almost gentle.

I wonder if I might describe this year as the final birthing of stuff that I had been carrying for years. Not that I'm done! But, I keep waiting for some wave of pain an angst that comes for some people when they birth. Beyond my general fears which I always have. For the most part this year has just followed the path of my physical birth in regards to it being gentle. However it has taken far longer than 45 minutes. :) Now granted there are hard things. Any birth has aspects that are challenging. But the birth itself for me has been much easer than all the many years I had been carrying this part of myself inside.

So yesterday during the Good Friday service I thought, I'm already in Easter. And although I really enjoyed the hyper-reflective service with candles, lights being turned off, liturgy, scripture, and wonderfully meditative choral and instrumental music I wasn't living in Good Friday.