For years I have participated in Lent (celebrated seems like an odd word to use for Lent). I have often tried to give up things like sugar, caffeine, and alcohol. Sometimes I am successful, other years not so much. For a while I decided that adding a spiritual practice was a better idea and tried adding devotionals, specific prayer patterns, exercising, new vegetables.

This year, I’m not sure what to do. I almost feel like I’ve been in a Lenten Limbo for months. I appreciate the blasphemous nature of that thought, but I don’t really know how else to describe it. I had a difficult time with Advent this past year as well. Maybe I have grown out of my narrow need to “focus” for a set number of days and have thus expanded to daily practice—or abandoned spiritual practice all together.

Maybe there are so many changes going on in my life that the thought of thinking about one more thing….

The uncertainty of our world as we know it weighs on me.

Daily decision fatigue makes me, well fatigued.

Living in this sandwich moment between parenting my almost grown children and my own parents feels very discombobulating.

Helping my second son prepare for his senior year/college application process is exhausting.

The aging female body in all of its glory and agony.

The waiting game for resolutions of multiple health concerns affecting those I love.

Dear readers these thoughts are not complaints, more like layers of laments. And instead of forty days, I feel like it’s been forty weeks!

Today is Ash Wednesday. I will attend church this evening for my ashes to mark the beginning of this season as well as practice the remembrance of our death, repentance, and renewal. Perhaps this year I will focus on the renewal part as I turn towards the coming of Easter. Renewing those fruits of the spirit listed in Galatians seems like a worthy goal.

I hope you find something with which to tether yourself in the coming days friends. When I need to be carried, you have always carried me. And when you need carrying, I’ll be there to carry you. There is no rule about not enjoying the coming spring days, or new beginnings, or surprises, or having fun during Lent. Sorrow, repentence, grief and sadness make joy and celebration and happiness and laughter so much fuller and sweeter regardless of when they occur. Love and Peace and Joy to you in this season of repentence and rebirth.

Psalm 51:10-12: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit” (NRSV).

Take care. Love Y’all,

Marla