Easter Tridduum 2018

Yesterday was Easter.  It was a beautiful Easter day. For our family, it was a "real" day with "real" moments and where I put a "real" post on my family photo sharing.  Sometimes on blogs you see all kinds of posts with neat ideas, great tips, knowledge worth sharing and other cool stuff.  Just like on social media, we sometimes forget that online posts do not always share the real stuff that happens outside of the positive stuff we see online, but everyone has those "real" moments where things do not go perfectly.  I am sure it is not typically intended that way, but just a result of sharing the positive and fun moments of our lives with others. 

But yesterday, the Miller family had a "real" Easter morning which I shared with our family.

"Well, this morning we were still trying to get food in the crockpot 2 minutes before leaving the house for church (including the browning meat, spices, sauces and veggies. Veggies did not make the cut before church), we forgot Lincoln's shoes (because he was refusing to get dressed and only made it to the car seat with a shirt and diaper on), Lincoln made it through the greeting at Mass before Scott had to take him out (and they never returned), after Mass Lincoln grabbed Adelyn's Squeeze-It drink she had brought from her Easter basket and it spilled all over his white church shirt, and on the way home people in the car had a hard time remembering to not say things that are not kind, necessary, and helpful...but the joy today helped us to laugh and I know we are so blessed.  Happy Easter to everyone.  Jesus is risen and we have life."  

It was a morning yesterday when one thing after another was frustrating and/or going wrong, but for some reason yesterday I was able to feel the joy of Easter and just laugh at all of this with Scott as we were driving home.  In fact one child accused me of laughing at them in this moment. 

I am not always able to see the positive.  Some moments I know that I should be excited or happy because of whatever the event, you know such as Christmas Eve, but sometimes that stress just takes me over and I am grumpy central.  Yesterday I was blessed and fortunate to be able to enjoy the day anyone and find all of these irritations funny in the end.  I had been thinking a lot about the preparation for Easter and in the story of Easter, Jesus, the gifts he gave us on Holy Thursday, all he went through and suffered following the Last Supper until death, his compassion, and his immense love for us.  I was also thinking of how joy filled the disciples must have felt on Easter discovering the truth. I think the little things we do in the house together as a family help me get into the spirit and mood just as the Christmas decorations, advent candles and calendar do in the season of advent (if only the holidays were not crazy days in December). I guess these things altogether reminded me that in the end, I have an amazing gift of family in my husband, children, and each of our families on each side, we have a great place to live, we have food on the table, Jesus rose from the dead and saved us all, and we have life.  I hope that all of these things continue to impact us in this way during future Easters, but also throughout other moments of the year.  

Here's to real life, imperfect humans, forgiveness, and life! God's joy and peace fill us all this Easter season! 

Holy Thursday celebration of the Last Supper (a day early because we had events out of our control in the afternoon on Thursday). 

Sampling the bread before the Holy Thursday meal. 

Waiting, waiting, waiting for everyone to get to the table so we can start!!

Finally! Eating!

Family service and doing what Jesus has done for us. Lincoln not knowing exactly what was going on, saw his sister getting her feet washed by Dad so he hurried over to join in the fun!

Adelyn enjoying the water and Lincoln patiently waiting. As patient as a 2 yr old gets.

Egg dyeing on Friday. Lincoln's first time to try this!

This is way too much fun! Look at my colorful hands!

Palm Sunday and Good Friday decor up. Baskets are ready! Forgot to photograph our stations of the cross in the backyard with the baskets collecting from each station. Decor ideas from our church parish and Pinterest of course!

Our scripture snack.  

Got this great idea from http://www.catholicicing.com/lenten-activities-for-children/

Happy Easter!  

The Last Supper Experience For Children- A Progression from Our Home to Our Church

2010- Last Supper Experience in our home.

to....

2015- Last Supper for Children at our church parish 

2010
5 years ago in the month of March, my second child/daughter was born,  Easter was about 2 and 1/2 weeks away from that time and I knew I was going to unfortunately miss attending the Tridduum weekend.  My church here in San Antonio, St. Francis of Assisi, has extremely beautiful ceremonies that are a wonderful experience. This particular year though, I was not up for taking my 2 week old and my almost 3 yr old out late at night. 

That school year, I had gotten into doing "Tot School" at home with my 2 1/2 year old son who would turn 3 a month after his sister was born. We had our daily routine with a weekly theme for crafts, music, and activities most weeks. The week of Holy Week that year, I decided to do some things that would teach him about holy week and the Tridduum at home and still give him a good experience even though we were missing out on attending with the church community.  

On Holy Thursdsay, my mom and I put out special meal decorations on the dining room table, set up a foot washing station and the plate in the above picture.  We read a kid friendly version of the readings and acted out The Washing of the Feet from the Gospel of John and The Lord's Supper from Luke. It was very sweet watching Zac participate in this hands-on, pre-school friendly way. He had a great experience and remembered it. 

2011
The next year in 2011, we did our special Holy Thursday again.  My daughter had just turned a year and was even able to participate while sitting on the table with us. 

2012
The following year we extended our experience and invited friends to join us.  Our family friends offered to host at their house on the afternoon of Holy Thursday before we headed over for The Mass of the Lord's Supper. There were four families who attended. We had a special meal as Jesus did at his last supper, washed the feet of our own family members (although the kids helped with many of the families), and then broke the bread and grape juice. It was special doing it as a community as the apostles did in Acts of the Apostles "devoting themselves to the communal life." Right after this experience the kids got to apply their experience as a church community at Holy Thursday Mass/The Mass of the Lord's Supper.  

A side note:
This same year I also wanted the kids to experience stations of the cross in a way that would be meaningful to them and on their level. I came up with a way for them to walk from station to station, stop at each one, and collect something that they put in their Easter baskets.  Our first experience can be found here.  Stations of the Cross 

2013
The families that participated in our Last Supper decided that it would be nice to open up our experience to members of our church.  We started mainly with the St. Francis Moms Ministry.  We had about 8 families join us from the ministry and a couple that were not in the ministry, but were parishioners at our church. We were able to reserve our youth room which has a table area and a carpet area where we set up several foot washing stations. 

                                      

                           

                             

2014
The Moms Ministry decided to continue hosting this event each year at St. Francis. We thought the teaching behind it was important to emphasize to the kids.  Our pastoral associate thought it was a great idea too and liked the theology. We had planned to use our youth room again, but it turned out to be taken the night we asked for it.  This was fortunate because we instead got to use the parish hall and it turned out that we needed it!   We had about 20 families join us! 

To prepare and get this great turnout, we had a great team of moms help in many ways for our event including publicity, supplies coordinating, set up and decorating, photographing, and food coordinating!  We also had a few people provide live music with a guitar player and vocalists. My role was to lead the night.  I was extremely nervous about it. I'm not great speaking in front of large crowds, but I do enjoy teaching and working with kids.  I did some preparing to make sure this was going to be on an appropriate level for a variety of ages. Most of the children were about age 2- 9.  

To make things run as smoothly as possible and not take more than 2 hours we had the schedule go as follows.

• Welcome and opening prayer
• Interactive discussion and questions for Children about Last Supper
• Foot washing reading from the Gospel of John
• Washing of the feet opportunity and dinner
• Experience sharing
• Breaking of the Bread reading from the Gospel of Luke
• Closing prayer- Whole group made a large circle and started off singing We Are One Body

The tables had paper across them for the kids to color on. Each table also had bread and grapes for the center. Live music started off the night.  Dinner was really like a feast. I imagine that Jesus's last supper with his apostles was a special feast. Each attending family brought something to share. There were two semi circles on each side of our stage with 3 foot washing stations in each semi circle. The children got to sit in front of the tables in an open area with pillows and carpets spread out. Before each reading I asked questions to the kids to engage them in the facts of the Last Supper.  After hearing a reading, I gave instructions on the hands-on participation they would get to do with the foot washing and dinner.  We had a large chunk of time designated for families wash to wash their feet at the stations and share a meal. After the foot washing and dinner time, I invited the children to share their experience of having their feet washed and also washing someone else's foot.  We then read the reading from Luke and had each table share the bread and grape juice. I thought the closing prayer with the entire group making a circle was beautiful, as it showed that we were really one body, united in Christ. 

I was fortunate to host this event with a wonderful team of ladies.  One person doing all of the work would have been extremely difficult. Each of them did a beautiful job taking charge of their role and putting forward great ideas to make the night special. I thank them for sharing their efforts and ideas and also for making this event a priority. 

2015 
I definitely wanted this tradition to continue at our parish. I felt like it was a great way to help children learn about Holy Thursday and prepare for that Mass of the Lord's Supper that we celebrate that day. At St. Francis the assembly is invited to wash the foot of someone else at the Mass.  It's beautiful to see the service to other members of our church family in such a way that we do not see ordinarily. Our Last Supper for Children can be a great way to encourage kids to do this at the Mass.

I invited moms to sign up to help on the team and had a whole new team of ladies who wanted to participate in a leadership type role.  This year we had

• 2 supplies coordinators
• Food coordinator
• 5 Set up team members on the day of the event
• Laisson for set up (coordinated with the office)
• Photographer
• Choir and music laisson
• Opening prayer and foot washing demonstrator by one of our priests!
• 2 readers (one adult, one child)
• Go to assistant or go-for

We had our same schedule, but I added a few more interactive ways of teaching. For instance, I showed the kids the picture of the Last Supper, and showed them an analogy for what "we are one body" means. I also used a calendar and had kids put icons in the calendar slots for Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday so that they would know when each was coming, 

• Welcome and opening prayer
• Interactive discussion and questions for Children about Last Supper
• Sang and did motions for This Little Light of Mine and We Are One Body by Dana Scallon
• Foot washing reading from the Gospel of John
• Washing of the feet opportunity and dinner
• Experience sharing
• Breaking of the Bread reading from the Gospel of Luke
• Closing prayer- Whole group made a large circle and started off singing We Are One Body

This was a great experience for the family as a whole.  Whether families had a baby, toddler, or adolescent, it was something special that families and/or friends got to share together. It also taught the young children to have courage to do something kind for someone, even if it means washing their foot. We hope that it helped to prepare them for Holy Thursday Mass as well.   Looking forward to next year!

Lent: Adding Habits

Lent...time to give up (not on yourself or people)...or give...or do extra. Traditionally, growing up, we always found something to give up.  As a kid, you might have been one to give up something easy. I remember Mom giving up Coke which is something she definitely enjoys. In college, I gave up dessert every year. It was very hard for me, but by the end I was proud of the discipline I had learned which taught me to withhold gratification or just wait. I also felt like it brought me closer to the Lord. Not that I learned exactly what he went through for mankind, but it encouraged me to think about what he gave up for us. I think sacrifice does give us an appreciation for what we have and also helps us to put ourselves in the shoes of others. Giving up meet on Fridays also reminds me that I am fortunate enough to be able to by good tasty meat and that it is important for me to take a day to eat something like fish that has health benefits.

Several years ago, I started something different for myself instead of "giving up" by "doing different" or changing habits and I found that many others were also "doing" this too. Giving up desserts, like I mentioned, helped me in a lot of ways, but I also went back to eating desserts regularly after lent too. I wanted to do something to change habits that I wanted to continue all year. Last year I focused on my response with tone of voice in moments of frustration. It's something I was trying to do anyway, but being lent, I had the extra reminder. I have another friend who a few years ago, decided she was going to go to bed earlier. She picked a time that she had to be in bed by which I think was 11:00 PM. She said it helped her to feel more refreshed in the morning although some nights she was practically running to hop in bed on time from whatever she was doing, but 40 days of it was good for helping to change a habit. 

This year I decided I am going to write in a journal every night.  A paper journal with a pen.  It doesn't have to be lengthy, but I'm going to write something about what I'm thinking, feeling, enjoying, or just something that happened in the day. I did this very frequently in college and it was very emotionally refreshing.  Sometimes issues that were bothering me seemed more clear after writing them down. I think that journaling every night may help me to be more patient in my family life, more relaxed, and feel like my mind is not racing.  Journaling in a computer is good too, but it feels different when writing with a pen and paper.  I have learned that different neural pathways in our brain are used with writing rather than typing.  It requires us to make "shapes" or "lines" when we write and not just push something.  It requires a bit more artistic side plus more.  There is some sacrifice involved with this too. I will have to sacrifice time to do this, but I think during and after, I will be glad. So this will be my extra. 

Just to add a little story to this lent post, I recently went to confession and was impressed by the penance the priest gave me.  He put the penance on me and said, "What do you think you should do to fix it?"  He gave advice, but also gave me some independence in solving the problem which I think is what great counselors do.  I told him I needed to make a plan on what I would do in that situation the next time. He said, "Okay good. That is your penance."  I appreciated his help in working to change habits.