Ah the irony of this title. To talk about Passover with a Julian Calendar year following it seems so ironic in some ways. Yet, even this irony cannot surpass the irony most would find with our little family Passover celebration this year.
For one thing, I had just given birth to my son, Micah, and was told by my midwives that I was to rest for two weeks and not do anything or go anywhere. Of course, I couldn't let Passover pass by without some celebration of it, no matter how meager.
Secondly, we knew my husband's children were going to their mother's house where they'd be drowned in Easter eggs and candy for a week, so we really wanted to celebrate Passover before they left. This meant we had to pull it all together a day before Passover was to actually begin.We decided that celebrating it in Spirit was more important than getting the day right.
Thirdly, the company we had ordered our baby chicks from called us that morning to ask us to pick them up. You see when you order baby chicks for a certain week, you don't really know what day they'll show up, but the call came and so my husband loaded up the kids and off they went for the 2 hour drive.
On the way, I had asked my husband to pick up some lamb, Matzohs and parsley - the three items we didn't have. Only he returned with dried parsley in a shaker bottle, because he didn't know what I needed it for.
In addition, we had just begun attending a new church about two weeks earlier. A family from the church, who my husband had previously known, had been very friendly to us, so we decided that morning to invite them for dinner. They came with their four children who are still at home, joining our family which consisted of my husband, my mother and me and our five children ages 4 days to 14 years.
Just before dinner, I discovered that the parsley was dried and not fresh, that the lamb was chops and that we didn't have enough chairs. I swapped some baby spinach for the parsley, pulled a bench up for some of the kids to share, stuck the chicks in a box in the basement, did an internet search for cooking lamb chops, found our old Hagaddah on the computer, strapped the baby onto my chest with a wrap and sat down with my computer for my husband and I to lead Passover. There were missing words in the computer document and we didn't have any printed out. It was thrown together, it was rushed in a way that it shouldn't have been, but all in all, we tried. It was a special meal with special new friends, our children heard the same lesson for the second Passover in a row and hopefully some of it is making its way down deep into their hearts.
It was not at all how I wanted it to be, but it was Passover. God was there with us. And, well, he'll accept as an offering even the most disastrous, meager attempts at honoring his Word.
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