Happy Easter! When I was growing up, Easter was a time for the Easter Bunny to sneak in a leave a few clues for where eggs would be hidden around the house. As an adult, I know it was my grandmother who made this special effort to make Easter a mystery treasure hunt rather than just a day for Easter egg hunting and an overabundance of chocolate.
Rather than the typical candies, there would be gift certificates to bookstores, a promise note for a favorite meal or even a treat of movie tickets hidden inside the eggs. In order to find the eggs, I just needed to solve the clues that would be left on the foot of my bed – usually attached to some stuffed rabbit.
The clues were not always simple nor were they obvious. It could take me hours to come up with the solutions. As I grew older and developed a keener sense of solving the clues, she’d leave clues to where I could find clues. The more complicated she made the mystery the more I enjoyed it.
Marriage is a lot like that Easter Egg hunt. In the early years, there’s lots of chocolates hidden in the eggs you find. You enjoy delving into the sweets and you don’t have to look very far. As your marriage matures and you get to know each other better, the location of the eggs changes and they are not so obvious. They don’t always contains sweets and their mysteries may be delightful, but they aren’t all sugar and candy.
After ten years of marriage, you need clues to find other clues and as you have learned how the other person thinks – the mysteries become a little more complicated. But delving into the mysteries keep this ritual of childhood and early marriage alive and well.
We need our mysteries. They spice up our romance. They keep us reaching out to each other. So take a lesson from the Easter Egg hunt – don’t forget to look into the mysteries of each other – you may just find a more delightful treasure.