Happy Spring & LOVE to All!

It's Easter and it's the day of faith in the resurrection of Christ for Christians around the world! Celebrated with family and friends going to Mass having large festive meals and painting and hiding Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies for children, and for those of us who are still children at heart!

This week was also full of Holiday celebrations.

There's Holi होली festival of colours, which is the celebration of the miraculous survival of Prahlada, celebrated in neon color by Hindus throwing beautiful colors in the air and on each other. In Manhattan there was a huge festival downtown and everyone was walking around with neon powder all over thier faces and clothes it was awesome!!

There's Pesach פֶּסַח celebrating freedom from slavery by Moses with large family dinners where people invite anyone who wants to go Jewish or not, eat way too much, drink sweet wine and reenact the same dinner people have had over 3000 years. And Jesus may have had his own Sedar which was the last super. 

To me and probably to most people all these Spring Holidays and especially Easter represents a day of renewal and rebirth. Most importantly they represent faith.
Faith in something that makes no sense to what we understand in our every day lives. Faith in something that has no explanation. Faith in not needing 'evidence' and proof of a miracle to know it exists.

I was orphaned as a baby in the poorest, albeit most beautiful country in South America, and my American parents had no easy task finding me, or me them. I didn't know my birth family until I was grown.

When I went to Bolivia to find my birth family, I had only the name my birth mother signed on  my adoption papers. And nothing else.
She had no birth certificate being she was born number 5 of 8 children at home in a tiny town next to the Amazon. They were extremely Catholic with French roots and I thank Gd they believed in having every miracle Gd gave them. I was born, Baptized, given a Catholic name, and then given to my American parents. I have no real birth certificate and I had until recently, no knowledge of my birth father's name or any other family members or if she had remarried, moved, nothing...

I went to the town I was born in. Sta. Cruz De La Sierra and used my broken Spanish to navigate the town. I was super frustrated. No one could help me. No one was listed. No one knew anything.
Then I found a little church, which was one of many, as the town is extremely Catholic. 
It was an outdoor church with a thatched like roof and wooden benches facing a huge bright painting of Jesus. It was beautiful. I sat there and I prayed. I don't know for how long, but I prayed for help to find my birth mother and my birth father and any guidance or help I would need to be put on the right path for my search.

I won't get into it now how I found my birth family but I will say: Within two days after I said my prayers. I found my family that had been lost to me most of my life. Both my parents had passed away when I was a small child so I did not get to meet them. But knowing where I came from and meeting my birth family in such an impossible circumstance answered so many prayers I've had since I was a little girl. It makes no sense I found them. It makes no sense I found my mother who had died and not even lived in the city I was left in when she died, and left no public records. It made no sense how I found my birth father's family when not even my birth mother's family knew who he was and she took his name to her grave, until I discovered in a manner that can only be described as.. miraculous.

But I found them. And I know with all the faith in my heart. It was that prayer, on that wooden bench in that little thatched roof church in that country that is beautiful and wild and fiercly devoted to faith that showed me the way.
That's why I have faith in things that make no sense. That's why I know there is more to us than what we see and that's why I know G-d has a plan for all of us.

I hope you love this time of year as I do! May there be many more fun Holidays and celebrations of faith and life and Springtimes in your future!

Happy Easter! Happy Pesach! Happy Holi! And may all your prayers be heard and answered and may your love of your faith grow stronger every day!

Much LOVE,
Jodi XXOO