Sometimes I have to remind myself that Easter morning happened.

It’s easy to remember the crucifixion part of the story, the blood and darkness and Mel Gibson movies. But the next morning can get lost in egg hunts and bunnies and new dresses. Then Monday comes and I’m totally screwed. I live like he’s still in the tomb and all I need is for him to wake up and rescue me from whichever of life’s messes is engulfing me now. I forget that he already has.

When my day feels like an uphill climb, I wait to give thanks and I get lost in the negativity, contributing to it myself with my ever-present talents of sarcasm, eye rolls, and sailor-mouth. I visit Gawker even though I know I’ll just get riled up at all the vitriol being spewed against people like me who dare to believe in a cross and a burial and a resurrection (okay, it is pretty crazy). I create dialogue in my head, going on a tirade against the last person who pissed me off.

I forget that the tomb is empty and that that means something. Everything.

I read Tim Keller, who tells me that this Jesus, “he forces our hand at every turn of the story…is forever closing down our options…is both the rest and the storm, both the victim and the wielder of the flaming sword, and you must accept him or reject him on the basis of both…the one thing you can’t do is just say, ‘What an interesting guy.'”

I think about how often my life tells Jesus that I think he’s an interesting guy.

But it’s changing. I’m finding it easier to find truth in paradox, to believe in the unexpected, to admit that things aren’t always what they appear. I can look on his torn flesh and call it beautiful, gaze upon his suffering and call it triumph, see his death and call it life. Sometimes I can even face what look like dead ends in my own life and not rule out open doors. I can breathe thanks in the midst of frustration, impatience, PMS, and actually mean it because I know that reality is so much more than just what I can see. I can walk into walls and laugh (eventually). I don’t just live in the absence of what the cross removed (judgment, condemnation) but in the presence of what his resurrection gave: new life, and not just to him. He came back to show us that there is always more. There is always a way for now to be transformed. Tombs no longer just swallow life–they can emit it. If he walked out of one–if death can actually bow down to life –everything has changed.