Resurrection Cookies

I love Easter. For me it is a reminder of the new life I have (and can experience daily) in Christ. It's the beginning of a new season... brighter colors, vivid sunshine... a clean slate. Jesus was crucified for my sin and for yours, but He didn't stay buried. He didn't stay dead. He conquered sin and death forever! And that victory is evident by the empty tomb on the morning of the third day. (Thank you, Jesus, for your redemption of me!)

I'll be honest: one fun aspect of Easter for me is puttin' the babes in some crisp clothes & headin' to church (and then going to my favorite little road to take spring pics). This year my husband will be gone on Easter Sunday, but we'll still do that even with Dad on the road (Day 2 somewhere in Cali headed to Baja with our 35 other kids for the Spring Break Mission Trip). And I'll still make ham and yummy potatoes and rolls.

But really, for reals, it's not about what we wear or what we eat. It's about the event that changed the world, the Man, The One True Living God, Jesus, Who changed the world and made such an impact that history is literally divided into Before and After (based on His first coming) so I wanted to do something with the kids to show them how big of a deal Resurrection Sunday really is.

We have been playing with our Resurrection Eggs for the past couple weeks (something we do even throughout the year if the kids ask for it). But something I read last year from a MOPS publication inspired me to try these Resurrection Cookies with my kids. They're going to looooove helping out AND they're going to totally digg the "pictures" behind each of the elements of the story/recipe. I can't wait!

I couldn't find the original MOPS resource, but I did an online search and I'll copy and paste the recipe and story here... just click the link to go to the original page to print out your own instructions. And let me know if you and your family bake these together this weekend! I can't wait to hear what my kids will say (and yours too)!

(I wasn't able to find any images online of the cookies, but you can bet your buttons I'll post some.)

Homemade Crafts and Gifts (featured column by various authors)
Resurrection Story Cookies
by Michelle Jones

I'm not sure where this recipe first originated, but it has been passed around the globe for many years. It's a very meaningful way to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with our children. These cookies are made the evening before and cooked in a warm oven overnight so they will be ready to eat on Easter morning.
* * *

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Ingredients & Supplies Needed:
3 egg whites

1 c. whole pecans

1 tsp. vinegar

1/4 tsp. salt

1 c. sugar

Zip plastic bag

Wooden spoon

Tape

The Bible

Place pecans in the plastic bag and let children beat them with the wooden spoon to break into small pieces. Discuss how after Jesus was arrested, He was beaten by the Roman soldiers.

Read John 19:1-3

Put the vinegar into a mixing bowl and let each child smell the strong aroma. Talk about how when Jesus was thirsty on the cross, He was given vinegar to drink.

Read John 19:28-30

Add egg whites to the vinegar (eggs represent life). Discuss how Jesus gave His life to give us life.

Read John 10:10-11

Sprinkle a little salt into each child's hand. Let them taste it and brush the rest into the bowl. Explain that this represents the salty tears shed by Jesus' followers, and the bitterness of our own sin.

Read Luke 23:27

So far, the ingredients are not very appetizing. Add 1 cup sugar. Explain that the sweetest part of the story is that Jesus died because He loves us. He wants us to know and belong to Him.

Read Psalms 34:8 and John 3:16

Beat the ingredients together with a mixer on high speed for 12-15 minutes until stiff peaks are formed. Explain that the color white represents the purity in God's eyes of those whose sins have been cleansed by Jesus.

Read Isaiah 1:18 and John 3:1-3

Fold in the broken pecans. Drop cookies by a rounded teaspoon onto cookie sheet covered with waxed paper. Explain that each mound represents the rocky tomb where Jesus' body was laid.

Read Matthew 27:57-60

Put the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door.
TURN THE OVEN OFF.

Give each child a piece of tape and seal the oven door together. Explain that Jesus' tomb was sealed.

Read Matthew 27:65-66

Now it's time to go to sleep.
Explain to the children that they may feel sad to leave the cookies in the oven overnight. Jesus' followers were in despair when the tomb was sealed.

Read John 16:20 and 22

On Resurrection (Easter) morning, open the oven and give everyone a cookie.
Notice that the surface of the cookie is cracked.
Take a bite.
The cookies are hollow!
On the first Resurrection, Jesus' followers were amazed to find the tomb open and empty.

Read Matthew 28:1-9

Editor's note: I'm also including the scripture for anyone who would like to read it right now...
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him.

And continuing with Matthew 28:10-20

Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me." While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

In my SPARE time

Do other moms even have SPARE time? And if they do, then I need to manage my time to be more like them. I'm the type o' gal that would rather load up all three kids in the driving rain and run to the store to BUY more time than to create more of it by better management. Ulgh. I'm a slacker!

But in my spare time I point & shoot my Nikon. And then in my other spare time I play with those pics in PhotoShop or Picasa. And in my other spare time (that one day I just KNOW I will have), I will take some serious classes on how to REALLY point & shoot my Nikon and how to REALLY beautify images with PhotoShop. Like for reals, you know?

Wellllll... in my "spare" time these past few days, I've been working on photos from a wedding shoot I did in December. The Insley's have given me permission to share my fave shots (the bride & groom are soooo cool and their little girl is just a doll). And just for fun I thought I'd post one of them here.

I really liked this image to begin with, but I couldn't get over the big huge stop-sign above the bride's head and so I IM'd an expert and begged for a tip on how to make the problem LITERALLY disappear. Mostly thinking she could help me learn the PhotoShop trick to removing objects from photos. BUT THEN! At almost the same time, she and I thought up a possible solution that the couple might really digg (and they said "Go for it!").

So here's the original, the proof, and the final. This image was one they chose for a big fat enlargement so it was pretty crucial that it be worth enlarging. Check it out...

Is their little girl not the cutest thing!

Anyway... I better get back to workin'... the babes are down and so this is some spare UN-INTERRUPTED time that I best be using wisely, as there is no EXTRA TIME store in my neighborhood nor anywhere in the continental United States of America. (To my knowledge, that is.)

Just curious... What do YOU do in YOUR "spare" time?
And how did you get so good that it's actually SPARE?

March Sixth Two Thousand Seven

hey! check out what i found on my myspace page. i forgot that i'd written my thoughts down LAST march. thought i'd copy & paste where i was last year at this time. side note: this has been a good few weeks for me. and a p.s.: i told the kids on saturday night that it was Grampa Rob's birthday in the morning...

"Are we gon' go there?" (birthday is synonymous with par-tay for my babes)
"No, we're not going to go there. Remember Grampa Rob died?"
"Oh, well so..." Bryson says, "So, he's gon' have his birthday in heaven then?"
"I don't know, Buddy. But we can tell Jesus to tell him Happy Birthday from us. He would like that."


Friday, March 02, 2007

a Father's love... Current mood:
thankful Category: Life

wow. i woke up today and thought about the date. march
2nd. you know, march always rolls around. once a year. and
with the cold rain comes a flood of bittersweet memories and the promise of
spring. the last time i talked to Dad was March 3rd, 1996.

he said to me, "you look beautiful, rocket." (tears coming
now...)

he died 3 days later. alone.

11 years later. There are days I still feel the rawness of losing
him. The grief overwhelms me at times. Like today, when I found the
celine dion song to put on my page. That was a song that released just a
couple weeks after he died and so it became my song. It became my song for
him. And I found it today and put it on my page and it brought me to my
knees again… sobbing and weeping over this man whose death I'll never get over…
kneeling, holding my tummy, sobs wracking my body, I was that 17-year-old girl
again with my heart ripped in two. Oh, my God! Oh, Lord, I miss
him! Tell him I miss him. I know you can tell him I miss him.

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me
Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'cause you believed
I'm everything I am Because you loved me

I loved that song and I still love it. And now I sing it, knowing
that it's about two Dads. My daddy, the
rockstar-didn't-come-here-to-have-no-bad-time-radical-hemispherical-dad who
believed in me and was so proud of me and had such high hopes for me. I
could talk to him and feel understood. The one who I played tackle
football with in the front yard of our white trash doublewide trailer (I didn't
know it was a trailer until I was in my early 20s). He was the one who let
me drive the minivan on Sundays… the one who saddled up my horses and held my
hand always. Always reaching for my hand!!! And greeting me at the
door whenever I came home. So sweet and tender.

For all those times you stood by me
For all the truth that you made me see
For all the joy you brought to my life
For all the wrong that you made right
For every dream you made come true
For all the love I found in you
I'll be forever thankful baby
You're the one who held me up
Never let me fall
You're the one who saw me through, through it all

But this song is also true of the Father who knew me before the foundations
of the world. The One who knit me together in my mother's womb. He
knows the number of hairs on my head and has more thoughts toward me than all
the grains of sand of every beach in the world!!! This Father loves me,
too. It took me years to accept His love. It took me years to see
him as a Father. But He is. And even though my Dad lived his life
and passed away… his words and laughter are there in my heart – only a memory
away. And the Father, my other Father, holds me still, with a perfect
love… one not stolen away by circumstances. But constant! Never
changing. Faithful and never forsaking. My times are in His
hands. Those tears I cry over my Daddy, he bottles them up. Those
tears that won't stop… he writes them in His book. My Father loves
me. LOVES me.

And... HE. WILL. NEVER. LEAVE. ME.

He is my Beginning and my End.

What's so amazing about my Father's love (earthly and heavenly) is that
they both reached for my hand. They both greet me when I come home.
They both believe in me and have hopes for me… and they understand me.

You gave me wings and made me fly
You touched my hand I could touch the sky
I lost my faith, you gave it back to me
You said no star was out of reach
You stood by me and I stood tall
I had your love I had it all
I'm grateful for each day you gave me
Maybe I don't know that much
But I know this much is true
I was blessed because I was loved by you

I cry today and I'll probably cry tomorrow and the next day and prob'ly
on the 6th, (the day he actually died), and on the 9th when he was buried.
But then spring comes. New life. Celebrating his birthday on the
16th and then my sister, Kristy's, and her daughter Macy's. There are new
mercies every morning. And so here I am 11 years later, thankful for all
the tears. Because I was loved by a strong and gentle Dad, a funny and
thoughtful man, whose eyes always shone bright with his pleasure in me.
Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of being my Daddy's daughter. It's a
precious thing. And thank you, Father, for calling me your own, for I am
bereft without You!

You were always there for me
The tender wind that carried me
A light in the dark shining your love into my life
You've been my inspiration
Through the lies you were the truth
My world is a better place because of you

Through my tears today, he spoke to my heart, a verse in an obscure book of
the bible. A tiny verse hidden away…

"He will quiet you with His love.." Zephaniah
3:17

Oh, Jesus, thank you thank you thank you for this heartache and for the
healing that tears bring and for the love you rain down on me!

And to my family & friends, may you ever know that the Father also
loves You!

March Sixth

So, this is my Dad. Today he's been gone for 12 years. This is the Grampa Rob my kids talk about out-of-the-blue and the personality I see glimpses of in my own husband (isn't that weird?).

This picture is from like 1992. And doing the math real quick, he was 38. What is so weird is that my husband will be 38 this year. I had no idea how young 38 was. And then to die at 41 is just unreal if you think about it.

I love this photo of Dad. It's nothing really all that special. Except it was my sister behind the 110mm camera taking photographs for her summer 4-H project. And then there's the DOUBLE-WIDE trailer in the background and I smile to myself knowing that back in '92 it was just our house... I was completely unaware that it was a trailer! And then there's the cord that jimmy-rigged our big-screen TV to the big ol' pole with the antennae thingy in it. Mom and Dad used to send us outside to "fix" the screen (we'd have to twist the pole until one of them said "OKAY! That's good!" and then we were cleared to come back inside. (I know! I'm thinkin' the same thing... REDNECK! lol)

And looking at his photo, I can hear Dad's laughter as he's asking Kristy how to pose. And I admire his youthful and hardworking arms, strong from good hard manual labor and his Wrangler jeans. And the smile in his eyes beneath the bill of one of his 80,000 [free] caps (this one from his sister-in-law).

Some years March is harder than others. There was lots of shock and heartache and pain when he died. And if I am not careful with my thoughts, I'll let myself into those rooms that have long since been cleaned up and polished by the healing restorative power of my Jesus. It's a weird thing, grief. Sometimes you just feel like getting back to the raw emotion of it, to feel barren and stricken and tear your clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes. Because when there's no edge on the grief... it means it's been too long since he's been within reach.

I'll always remember the feel of the inside of his hands. He was a hand holder. And his hands were calloused and yet polished smooth with consistent use. His hand would give my knee a squeeze or he'd get me right in that soft spot between the collar bone and the neck with a teasing jab. Oh yeah, he would bite his nails to the quick (my husband, does, too). Those were my dad's hands.

I don't know. Today is really just like yesterday. Except not. It's just like tomorrow will be. Except not. Today, 12 years ago, my life and my world stopped. And yet, the earth kept spinning on its axis. Everyone around us continued on. But our lives were changed. So we live even though they don't. And trust that God was working it for good for my heart and my life.

And my babes will know their Grampa Rob through me, through what I share. Just like my Dad would tell us about his own father who died before I was born.

In the meantime, I keep discovering little treasures from the Lord, in His good humor, that He's ingrained into my husband. Sometimes I just marvel. Bryan didn't get to meet Dad. So my husband only knows him through me. There are times when Bryan will laugh really hard and it sounds like Dad (that noiseless gut laugh, you know?). Bryan's always called me Babe (my mom was The Babe). He calls our oldest son Roberto (which was also something my Dad called my brother). One time in a half-hearted scolding of our two boys for goofing around in their room, Bryan said, "That's enough there, Kemosabes." (Dad totally always called Kristy 'Kemosabe'!)
btw kemosabe is a Native American word for "faithful friend." That's a free fact for you, no charge.

And you know, most of these similarities between my Dad and my Bryan didn't start surfacing until after we've had our babes. So, I just thank my Jesus, for the ways He (big H) and he (little h) show up in my everyday life. And on days when I miss my Dad... ordinary non-milestone days and especially on those extraordinary memory-maker days, I just beg the Lord to tell Dad I love him and miss him and still need him. I'll always be glad I got to be his daughter.

And hey... "daughter" is just one letter different than the word "laughter." And when I think of Dad that's what I cherish the most -- his laughter and the encouragement he brought to everyone around him. Dad still makes me laugh. So I know I'm still his girl.

God's Design:

So, two things on my mind and heart in the past weeks. I'm pregnant. And I've also inherited a pseudo-mama-bear role for 35 teenagers. So on two fronts I'm thinking and meditating on God's design for sex and sexuality, purity and integrity, the pregnancy and birth process and the dating and marriage process.

My babes are fascinated by my belly and are asking "when I was a baby?" type questions. It's been so fun to tell them stories about when they were "babies". Like how Kennady would NOT sit down in her high chair, so Bryson would holler "'Poon! 'Poon!" (for spoon -- aka: rod of correction) and for her to hear our theory of why we think Jesus gave Kennabear her Brown Eyes (because Mommy ate so much "chyockyate" when she was in my tummy. And how Kev cried like a pterydactyl (sp?) when he was a newborn. So we've been to the library and checked out books about a new baby sibling that's living inside my belly, but will be coming to live with us in June.

We ordered a book from Amazon called "The Story of Me " and it's BOOK 1 from a 4-Part GOD'S DESIGN FOR SEX series. This book is for ages 3-5 and introduces the basics. It lays the spiritual foundation for the child's understanding of sexuality and how God loves the human body and called it "very good" and that our bodies and our sex organs are gifts from God.

What I liked about the book was that it is a dialogue between a boy and his parents, sittin' down for a chat on their couch and he's asking questions... "Tell me the story of me!" he says. And the parents tell him how God took "a piece of Mommy and a piece of Daddy" and made him. That his Mom pushed him through the birth canal (with proper anatomical verbage) and how his sister was born when the doctor opened Mommy's belly to take her out.

It covers breast milk and the umbilical cord and then, which is really cool, it also introduces the fact that "Not all hugs and kisses are good... If you don't want to share a kiss or a hug or a touch with someone, you don't have to. God does not want anyone to take love from you that you don't want to share."

We've been talking to the kids about good touch/bad touch a lot lately. At bathtimes especially. I really liked how the authors worded it. This book backs up what we've been teaching our kids already. And so I'm sure we'll take our kids through the whole series and take a pro-active approach in showing them God's best in a culture that has tainted and perverted and counterfeited sex and sexuality. We want them to hear the truth from us before they hear the lies of the world.

Anyway, if you have kids ages 3 - 14, there's a book in this series to assist you in having this essential (but maybe awkward) "talk." Check it out!