It has been a long time since I have been able to celebrate Lent and Holy Week the way I might wish to. With Anselm and Perpetua so close in age I spent four and a half straight years pregnant and/or nursing, which puts fasting and such right out. (That enforced non-participation is not something to feel guilty about, but it did often feel strange.)

In the Holy Weeks since 2015 I have had a baby, and then a toddler and a baby, and then two toddlers, and now a toddler and a preschooler to wrangle. Holy Week services are inevitably scheduled during someone’s naptime or bedtime; our particular family situation means that if someone needs to stay home from church with the children, it’s me. That probably sounds like a complaint — it’s not, really, just a reflection of reality right now — but it also means that I can’t even remember the last time I made it to a Good Friday service.

It’s easy to read all of those wonderful liturgical parenting blogs and feel that my own efforts have fallen rather flat. But the point of Holy Week is not my efforts — it’s about nothing less than the immeasurable grace of God towards a sinful and desperately-loved humanity. And in these seasons with small children and scattered church attendance and ridiculously improvised celebrations at home… well, there is grace for that too.

Yesterday afternoon, Anselm and Perpetua helped me bake bread, marking its top with a cross (recipe). We talked about how Jesus washed the disciples’ feet and instituted the first Lord’s Supper. Later they went to bed and I got to go to the Maundy Thursday service at our new church. We won’t be at home on Easter Sunday, so perhaps we will make empty tomb cookies tonight instead of on Saturday, assuming I find and unpack my mixer. (Note for those who would try them: I remember from last year that using a full cup of sugar is way too sweet. This year I’ll halve it.) And that’s how we’ll do it this year. Mostly at home, mostly simple, mostly expecting to meet with God in the chaos of family life and the stillness in between.

A blessed Easter Triduum to you and yours.