We have entered into the season of Lent. I love the purpose of Lent and what it is preparing my heart for: Easter. Forty days to think about all the sh*t in my life and how screwed up I am and how desperately I need, as my friend Winn Collier writes, a "long redemption."
I meet with an amazing group of women from my church every other Monday night. Last Monday we talked about Lent, what it meant for each of us, what it could look like to participate in the Lenten season as a community, as sisters in Christ. It struck me during our meeting that the next forty days could look very different if we chose to enter into each other's lives in intentional and authentic ways. Even more, coming together as a church family on that glorious Easter Sunday...well that celebration could be altogether holy as we journey to the Cross together.
This season of Lent has allowed me to enter more deeply into the lives of those around me. I have been convicted of how much time I waste either wanting to escape or needing a so-called break. And how this use of my time has kept me from investing time in myself and basically all of my other relationships. Because of Lent I have chosen to offer up more time to God to use however He desires and to connect with others around me in deeper ways. It has reminded me that I do want to know the every day things of those close to me, but even more, I want to know what God is doing in their lives, what things are, as Miska says, stirring in their soul.
I have limited the time I spend e-mailing and checking (and re-checking) e-mail during this forty days. Yesterday there was this e-mail in my inbox:
Sorry to have missed you at church last night. How is your Lent experience so far?? For me it is exciting. I am beginning to see repentance as a hopeful thing vs a thing of feeling shame and guilt that I am imperfect or messed up or need God again. I just keep repenting and praying to be able to live in a new way. And I just keep declaring that this redemption in me has to be through Jesus and the Holy Spirit...not my own efforts or striving. And I keep asking myself, do I believe Jesus' resurrection is enough for me and my broken, trapped, sinful parts. And the truth is, it is! I still am experiencing worry, sadness/discouragement, loneliness...but when it happens, I seek to simply come back to my need for God and allow need to be a good thing, not a weakness. Sometimes I can fight the heaviness off with the truth of God's word but when I can't I just ask God to come and love me and help me live in the way he created me to live and at some point he brings me a breath of fresh air until the next round of darkness.
That's it, I thought as I read her e-mail: longing for redemption, seeking freedom in Christ, and returning again and again and again. And having the courage and desire to share these scary, honest, and hopeful places with those who journey alongside. As I prayed for my friend, it occurred to me that perhaps it is in this kind of sacred community that we can truly be changed.
May yours be a blessed and holy Lent.
beautiful, Amy.
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