Lent makes more sense.
And this year, more than any recent one, I’m feeling compelled- pulled, really – to find a way explore and enter the next 40 days.
When I was a kid, it was about “giving up” something – tv, chocolate, fighting with siblings.
As I got older, it was about “adding” something – prayer, music, journaling, bible study.
Today I find myself thinking about how no one is simply handed a large heaping size chunk of “time.”
Our culture is busy busy busy, to a fault.
Even when we try to consciosuly simplify, we’re pulled in too many directions.
Our time isn’t ours. Our jobs, our fears, our kids, responsibilities, vices, health struggles, opportunities… pull that precious sought after gift of time… away from us.
So I’m using my long-quiet blog to hopefully, “resurrect” and carve out a little time – a little space. I hope you won’t mind my using it in this way.
For prayer, reflection, sitting with the pain in the world.
That said, my recent prayers and subsequent nudges have also reminded me not to be afraid to let my heart break.
But, like, who wants to go there?!
It’s too much, right?
And yet, I feel like I’m being reminded not to hide, not to avoid. Am I being encouraged to show up… alive? awake? uncomfortable?
Hmmm.
Some other things I’m thinking about and jotting down to remind myself include:
- mourning (going hand in hand with the heart breaking stuff)
- relinquishing (illusions of) control of people/situations/myself – so much suffering there
- letting myself be quiet
- not filling every moment, letting moments fill me
- breaks from the time-suck void of phones and technology
- freeing pain trapped inside my body
- recognizing fragility in life and loving wildly anyway
- showing up
- not worrying about how I show up or what I look like/present like and just be who I am
- not being afraid to hurt… but also not being afraid to heal
- And this image keeps popping into my head:
All that said … God help me in these days ahead!
alive. awake. uncomfortable. 