Easter Sunday

Faith in Easter

Tomorrow children will be wrestling with other children and their baskets to grab up the colorful dyed eggs laying in the fresh spring grass. Maybe at a neighbor’s house or a family reunion, more likely at church, where the safety of free hunting is secure.

I remember fondly a few times that Easter was a celebration of family, dressing in our Sunday best and meeting our friends at the First Baptist Church in Rawlins, Wyoming. Though at fifteen years old, I lost my faith in Easter, in community and in church ….including God. There was doubt in my mind and my heart about the faith that had been instilled in me since grade school.

Being present at church every Sunday for bible study and congregation seemed an important part of our family unit, for me, my brother’s and my Mother. Honestly, it was for her, she seemed happiest at church. The whole spiritual God thing was the core of her belief and the philosophy of all that church offered her in part held her together.

It was tough, no difficult to understand how this God could be so perfect and yet allow such pain to be alive at my home. Very few people, then? Maybe no one knew the hell we suffered in our private home on 804 West Pine. Making it tough to praise the Lord and yet wonder how this great entity could allow my family to be broken. Praying every day for help, for companionship and for safety all through the week, and giving another dose of prayer on Sunday’s, why wasn’t God hearing me? Why did this great being allow my Mother to suffer? Where was God’s compassion for my family?

Although I eventually got dipped in the great baptismal bath later that year, at fifteen that Easter marked the day that God left my mind. There would be no Williams children or Mom at church that Easter Sunday, no baptism for Micklin and as planned, no Father to join us.

As with many nights before, and plenty to follow, my Father in a drunken state the night before and all through the early morning bashed my Mother’s face in with his fist. Her jaw was broke, her teeth were gone and her face resembled oatmeal. There were no apology’s from my Father, just the explanation that we wouldn’t be attending Easter service, nor my baptism this Sunday. I remember a strange looming stillness at the house that morning and he crying with his face down at the dining room table.

Is there a God?
Why are other families happy?
Why doesn’t anyone help my Mother?
Why does my Mother stay here?
Why does my Father always hurt my Mother?

I have no spiritual feelings for Easter, the concept and learned biblical teachings, that God sent his only son, who was he, to be born and die for our earthly sins, but to rise and join his heavenly Father in ever lasting life ……divine lasting life.