Happily, Liam and the kids stayed in the tent all night, returning to the warmth and comfort of the house somewhere before 7, at which point Liam retreated to bed and the kids watched tv before going back to camp life for breakfast. This is glamping in the extreme – I fear they won’t take our next storm filled Gower trip quite so well with no house and tv to retreat to!

My hot cross buns had some issues with proving, but they still tasted good. Liam found an irony in the fact they hadn’t risen well despite it being holy weekend. Thankfully Christ has risen, regardless of my baking malfunctions.

Baking featured heavily today. There are strong Bowen family traditions in finding as many recipes as possible that you can put mini eggs on, and including them in every future Easter, which means there are more and more ‘traditional’ bakes every year. Mum suggested today that after lockdown we’ll repeat every festivity we’re missing – Mother’s Day, my dad’s birthday, Easter, my brother’s 40th…and that’s without all the ones we haven’t missed yet. Which basically means we’re going to be partying solidly until Christmas. I hope Joe Wicks continues post lockdown, or our waistlines are definitely going to suffer.

The kids were also keen to get in on the baking act, although it mainly featured seeing how many mini eggs they could steal along the way. Micah seems to be pretty well grown out of his dairy and soya intolerances (hooray!!!), so is venturing into the world of real chocolate, and it’s a hit. He came running into the house crying this afternoon, when I asked him what happened, he said, without taking a breath, ‘I fell off my skateboard – where’s my cakes?’

Theo was desperate to go on a scooter ride this afternoon, and as Liam had already done a bike ride earlier, it was my turn. It obviously then became all three of the little ones coming with me, and given that navigating three small children and wheeled objects on pavements is rarely a smooth process, I opted to do the small loop. Which was a wise move, as Theo had given up on the scooter before the end of our street. I did feel a bit short-changed on my daily ‘walk’ though!

We decided that the older kids could do with some exercise too, so Liam set them a scavenger hunt to do on their bikes around our estate. Not that we don’t trust our little darlings, but we told them that to avoid any cheating, we wanted photos of all 3 of them at each place. The photo above was McDonald’s. Clearly the sight of it re-opened those wounds.

I still feel unprepared for the weather change, but we did find the hats and suncream basket yesterday. It turns out if you buy roll on suncream there are no more fights to applying it. They spent most of the day running around shouting ‘where’s my roll on?!’ Hopefully the enthusiasm will last until teens…

Theo’s application technique might need some work though. He looked like a smurf for the rest of the day.

Maddie’s a bit confused over Easter. When she was making her cross on the hill craft the other day, she was really keen to paint eggs on the hill beneath the cross. She still couldn’t figure out where or how they feature in the Easter story. I mumbled some things about eggs and spring and new life…then basically realised I have no idea how the whole eggs and chickens and bunnies thing moved in to take over Easter.

I started reading the book of Isaiah before Coronavirus really took hold of our country, and it was completely unplanned, but very happy timing, that I got to chapter 53 today. A chapter in which Isaiah prophecies the coming Saviour, and His life and death. And in the middle of verses that talk about how Jesus would be rejected, and ‘led as a lamb to the slaughter’, it says:

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭53:4-6‬ ‭

I was thinking today about the little phrase ‘by His stripes we are healed’. Other versions of the Bible say His wounds, or His scars. After Jesus rose from the dead, He still had scars. He had completed the miracle of death and resurrection, but instead of His body being fully healed, He carried those scars after death and back into heaven.

I carry scars around with me-emotional scars of hurt and shame, grief and pain. Scars of anxiety after a sudden loss. Scars of hurt from rejection. Scars of insecurity from my failings, and scars of guilt from my mistakes. But Jesus bears scars on His body so I don’t have to. ‘By His stripes we are healed.’ The reason Good Friday is good is because He came and did what I couldn’t do and took from me all the baggage I carry. The hope I have in the hard days and the dark days is because He bears my grief and my sorrows, and yet He didn’t just come to bring comfort, but to bring freedom. From the burdens, from hurts, from fear, from shame, from scars. And in a world where we are mourning our loss of freedom, that for me is what makes today a very Good Friday.