Counting down to Easter, I never thought that that would be something that I’d do one day. Well, several days. Until this year. I’ve read different books about family life these last couple of months, and several mentioned celebrating – and with that counting down to – Easter. When you think about it, we actually celebrate the most important moment in our Christian faith with this event. And if we count down to His birthday, why not to this one?

Last Sunday, we read about how Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey. The leaders of the church – no Sietse, temple – weren’t happy with that. But Jesus didn’t come to be the king of a city or a country, no, He came to be the King of our hearts. At least our oldest got that part. We made a donkey out of our foot prints (well, the boys) and we wrote ‘Hosanna’ on top of it. This piece of art is proudly presented at the first day of our countdown.

We had to wait until Wednesday until we could do our next event. I called it ‘feet washing Wednesday’, because it sounds fun. A few days before I prayed unexpectantly (because yes, those prayers exist too) that we’d have nice and warm weather in our lovely Denmark this time of year. But while praying I was already thinking: “warm enough so we can be running outside bare feet and play with water? Probably not…” And it turned out to be 18°C! So instead of having to get dirty feet, so we could wash them, in our fairly small bathroom, we had the entire garden. Lots of space to get messy in the mud, wash each other’s feet and… run through the mud again – wash feet – mud – wash… Until our water was just as muddy as everything else. At least it still smelled nice.

Yesterday, on Maundy Thursday, we made breadsticks and celebrated communion. I don’t know what our oldest got out of it, because a little later we heard a voice shouting from the sandbox: “can I have some more wine?” Today, we’re having visitors, and we’ll be taking time to look back at Jesus’ dying on the cross, to have a resurrection brunch on Saturday.

This week is filled with fun activities for the kids, but it helps me too to stand still with what Jesus actually went through in the end. More than ever I’m looking forward to the resurrection of Jesus, our Saviour. Death couldn’t hold Him down, He is risen, He’s alive!