There came a day in my life that I had to make a serious life decision. It affected people I loved most dearly and I knew it would hurt them. It was at Easter services while I was in my pretty dress and a hat that my mother had worn on my head that I pondered my life choices.

Funny thing about the Easters of my childhood, we always wore white cotton gloves and we always wore hats. And most Easter mornings were spent franticly looking for a clean pair of gloves that matched and a hat that went with our dresses. My mother wore fine kid gloves, almost as smooth as her hands, which were both remarkable and memorable. My sisters inevitably found all the grown-up gloves, I was usually left with the clunky kind with seams on the outside, making each finger looking more like Minnie Mouse’s than mine.

But the hats. The hats were the best part. My mother had boxes of them piled high in the linen closets. We wore those things interchangeably until they no longer fit our heads, then they were relegated to the dress-up box or saved for who knows what. Our home movies put an exclamation point on it; hat floating from head to head, Easter to Easter. They weren’t so much resurrected, but they did seem to have everlasting life.

So I sat there listening to the gifted priest talking about how resurrection worked in our lives. I was pleased to hear that, apparently, I didn’t really need to die in order to be remade, but instead to make a paradigm shift in my thinking or in my life. Then it dawned on me. The change I was dreading to make wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was simply a different path I could take. I could turn my head and turn my life and it would be okay. It would all be okay.

I made my choice.

These days it seems like we are all looking for a resurrection in our lives…when we’ll return to a new life after our separations, when we can return to normal.

But I don’t want to return to normal.

I want to know that my neighbors can find healing hands. I want our children not to fear hunger for not being in school. I want everyone who works to be valued. I want the love and appreciation we are all feeling for the people who have kept us fed and safe and amused in this time of darkness to keep feeling that way. I want us all here to remember why we became a country in the first place, to throw our lot together and keep us all from harm and to preserve our dearest principles.

To emerge from this time of uncertainty, I want us to make the kind of choices that will facilitate that change. Like I did that Easter, sitting in the pew, wearing my hat, listening to the gifted priest and realizing that all it just took a different point of view.

Painting: New Beginnings © Lissa Banks 2020