Today is Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2021. I typically look forward to Lent. Really. I like Lent. For me, it has never been a depressing season but rather a time to do something different. A time to give something up or learn something new. It's often a time when I intentionally read my daily devotions versus other seasons in my life when those habits fall by the wayside to busyness and distractions. Lent has always been a bit of a reboot for me...but then we have Lent this year. Lent in 2021. Lent after a long year of what has truly felt like Lent for months because we are living in a global pandemic. We have given up so much. We have lived lives that look so different than other years. It has been a strange year. I have experienced great joy in that my oldest son turned one and he learned to walk and talk, and my youngest son was born in 2020! Ordinary miracles. At the same time 2020 has contained the saddest moments when I've missed people and dear people I know have contracted and died from Covid-19. Really I should feel grateful, I should recognize my blessings...but I'm too tired. I wonder how I will explain this year to my boys when they are older and remember nothing of living in a global pandemic....I don't know what I'll say. So where does that leave us with Lent? I'm too tired for Lent. Lent almost feels irrelevant in 2021, like perhaps it is a relic of a different time and yet...maybe it is not. Perhaps, now that we have experienced life in a pandemic, circumstances different than most of us have ever lived through, experiencing loss of freedoms, loss of opportunities and most deeply the loss of people both to this damn disease and to social/physical distancing...we may understand Lent. I've heard it said we cannot appreciate the sweet without a little salt. I don't love that analogy but there may be a grain of truth in it. Maybe all this loss gives us pause to choose to be in the moment. We are not promised anything more than a moment and we know now what it is to live without. Maybe all this loss give us time to get rid of things that waste our time and attention and focus in on what is actually important. I know I am examining the amount of time I mindlessly scroll social media. Zoned out. Philippians 4:8 reminds us, to focus our thoughts on anything that is excellent, admirable, true, holy and just, all that is pure and lovely and all that is worthy of praise. I wonder if for Lent, what would it look like to do just that. To be present in the moment. To notice the excellent, admirable, truths, holy moments, the opportunities to work for justice, to think of things that are pure and lovely and spend time in praise. I often find this is the gift of having small children, they are totally in the moment. What if for Lent, instead of doing or adding or busying or trying super hard or beating ourselves up we just breathe. We notice. We celebrate the joys, we acknowledge and sit with the sorrows and try and live a different way. A less anxious way. To accept things for what they are rather than wish it away or fight to change things we cannot control. I wonder if then Lent might actually be a time to look forward to.
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