I love Easter.\u00a0 And I do believe that Jesus’ resurrection means we should listen to His words.<\/p>\n
After a lovely Easter service at church, my son and I went to my friend’s house.<\/p>\n
I have known this friend, Darlene, since 3rd grade.\u00a0 And when I moved to Virginia almost 10 years ago now, I and my two kids, then 12 and 18, lived in Darlene’s basement for six weeks.\u00a0 Darlene’s kids were 2 and 4.<\/p>\n
Darlene has invited us over many times in the years that followed.\u00a0 Today my youngest son, who is now 21 and a college graduate, and I went over for Easter dinner.\u00a0 Darlene’s kids are almost-12 and just-turned-14.\u00a0 Her oldest is considerably taller than me now.<\/p>\n
And having dinner with them felt like being with family.\u00a0 Darlene’s husband Matt talked with my son about the challenges of finding a job.\u00a0 I think it was helpful for my son, but was done in a friendly way and not at all a patronizing way.<\/p>\n
And we did lots of eating and lots of talking and taught one of our favorite games to them and just had a lovely time.<\/p>\n
There’s something extra special about knowing people — the whole family — over time.<\/p>\n
My “real” family is on the west coast.\u00a0 But I still have family here.<\/p>\n
And that’s a blessing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love Easter.\u00a0 And I do believe that Jesus’ resurrection means we should listen to His words. After a lovely Easter service at church, my son and I went to my friend’s house. I have known this friend, Darlene, since 3rd grade.\u00a0 And when I moved to Virginia almost 10 years ago now, I and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}