Day after Easter ...

While it seemed everyone south of Cartersville in the state of Georgia was scrambling from the oncoming onslaught of tornados, my family and I were embarking on what has become somewhat of a regular occurance – driving to Alabama. The reason today was for Easter dinner with my family.
Seen as the most holy day on the Christian calendar, Easter seems to have one of the more intense identity problems in holidaydom among its participants. For many, it's one of the few days in the year they'll darken the doors of a church. For others, it rings in the unofficial start of spring (baseball purists, begin arguing here) and therefore means we start wearing more brightly-colored clothes. For still others, it translates into a spike on the sale of eggs, bunny stuff, and chocolate.
The truth is that Easter is a day, or weekend, when we recognizing perhaps the most possible contrasting (on the surface) events in human history. We try to somehow comprehend the intense suffering of Good Friday and then revel in the resurrection of Easter morning. It can be easy to not think about what was going on in between those two things. Did Jesus literally kick down the gates of hell and take the keys of the chain around Satan's belt? Was there a quick trip to heaven with the thief on the cross ("Today, you'll be with me in paradise.") before a U-turn back down to Hades? Were there captives in purgatory freed and brought back?
I'm not going to pretend to have the answers on these – just musings on my part – but it does make me think again about myself. Like Christ on the cross, I died at one point. That came when I was a kid and gave my life to him. I died to self. One day, I'll be taken to be with him, just as he ascended on the Mount of Olives.
The part that still gets me is what happens in between. Have I kicked down any gates? What obstacles have I faced down? I have my victories and defeats, my good days and bad. But these are the struggles we can anticipate and even welcome. Without the fight, whether it be intellectually/physically with someone else or spiritually on our own, we can't see our capabliities.
Each day is an "in between" day. It's a fight. My desires want to do one thing while my will dictates something else. I go down in defeat when I listen to the former. I feel closer to God when I stick with the latter.