Some things we do without ever asking why.

I remember the bright red color of easter eggs grandma used to dye. They were red – blood red. The dye she soaked them in stained her fingers for days. This was not the soft, pastel kind used in the U.S.

Grandma would press a parsley or clover leaf against each egg, then wrap it tightly in a piece of women’s stocking so the leaf would stay in place. The eggs would then be carefully lowered in the dark red dye and, if it worked correctly, they came out blood red with a delicate white silhouette of the leaf imprinted on the shell.

I don’t know what the purpose of all this was.
But it is etched in my memory.

Those blood red eggs remind me that life is full of rhythms repeated long enough to feel normal. Practices we perform and rarely pause to ask why or how they even got started in the first place.
Maybe that’s why I struggle with traditions.

And yet, I have parented long enough to see this: there is purpose in these repeated, rhythms – a kind of belonging. A quiet framework that holds life together.

Then, I read Jesus’s words.

This one ask –

Do this in remembrance of Me.

We do this every Sunday.
This remembering.
This communion.

And because I know what it is to be a foreigner – in a foreign country and in my own country – I do what foreigners do.

I try to understand.

I learn that the first century Jewish tradition of betrothal involved a cup of wine. The groom would drink, then offer it to the bride. They called this ceremony kiddush. The sealing of the betrothal. A new covenant.

And I lean in, the weight of His words echoing through me:

This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Once the cup was shared, the groom would pay the bride-price. This price – the mohar – made the covenant binding.

I feel the weight of that word: cost.

Then came the waiting.
He would go to prepare a place for her.
And she would wait – set apart for him.

I read this. And something in me breaks.

He wasn’t speaking in abstract terms. He was speaking their language – so they would understand, and know they were understood.

Sometimes you hope for a breakthrough – and it turns out that what needs to break is you.

Because I have fought against ‘traditions’ all my life. Pushed against the boundaries of what was expected and fought to break through them.

But what do you do when the One that holds the universe chooses to speak your language?

So that you understand – and know you are understood.
This covenant kept in Him. This covenant of blood, that cost Him the bride-price of life itself.

So I – even I – can sit at the table that stretches across space and time communing with the One that knows, and the One who keeps.

My whole life feels spread across time and space and swallowed up in between continents, in between who I was and who I am becoming. Between knowing and being known. Between understanding and wanting to be understood.

And I realize this.
There is a way to know of God and not know God.

And yet,
knowing of Him can lead you into knowing Him.

I remember the easter eggs Grandma used to make.
The stained fingers.
The careful wrapping.

Some traditions are simply this: a simple reminder that someone cared. Cared enough to do it again and again.

And some are more than tradition.

They are remembrance.

Because I am the bride with dementia of the soul.
I forget.

So I remember.
That Someone cared enough pay the bride-price – at the cost of His life.

My body filled with His Spirit.
His body given for me.

A covenant of blood.
I am known.
I am chosen.

Love has made a way for me not to forget.