lent, seasons, and risk

Hello, gentle readers! 

I hope you are well. It seems my resolution to be consistent with the blog has not quite worked out yet. *shakes head* Life lately has been so inconsistent that I often find it hard to conjure up consistency within me. Today, I write to you in the midst of a decision. I have to decide by tomorrow, and I’m not quite sure what I will say. Yesterday, I was leaning towards a no, today towards a yes. I am trying to figure out what it means to act in faith in this moment.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the penitential season leading up to Easter and the delightful season that is Eastertide. We will creep slowly towards the Lord’s death on the cross and towards his resurrection. The beginning days of Lent are grey and cold, winter persists here. It’s hard to imagine that in a few weeks, the season will shift.

Related Post: feeling lost in your twenties

Perhaps you are stuck in a perpetual winter. Every day is the same. Same people, same tasks. Nothing new on the horizon. Hoping for a shift in the air, but dreading each day’s end when the shift doesn’t come. Expectancy is hard. Hope is hard.

To wait for what might not come takes a lot of strength. It takes imagination to seek beyond what’s right in front of us and wonder at new life blossoming in the future. Sometimes my capacity for hope has been worn. 

Over the past few years, I have waited to enter into a new season that friends and acquaintances seem to enter in with ease. It has taken work and prayer and a flickering flame of faith not to grow bitter. Not to let myself give way to complaining. (Though there were many times I fell). Envy is a pernicious thing. I had to be reminded that I don’t see it all. That the pictures on Instagram are not the whole story. Even when I had pieces of the story, I oftentimes still judged and found myself lacking.

Related Post: Dreams, Grief, and Fruit

God is a Gardener. He prunes and weeds out what is not fruitful for a greater harvest. Sometimes I look over at someone else’s garden and forget that different fruits grow at different times. God is not writing the same story with my life as someone else’s.

It feels ironic to make a serious decision on such a momentous day, a day in which we give something up to remind ourselves of the greater thing: God.

Yet perhaps giving something up is an indicator of faith, that God in His kindness will satisfy our needs. That doesn’t make my decision any clearer though.

Part of me is afraid that if I say yes, I will miss out on something better. Which is, of course, a real possibility. After all, you don’t know what’s around the corner.

Something I’m really struggling with is navigating the risk. (I woke up with Navigate by Crystalyne on my mind this morning.) There’s risk either way. I could say no and wish I said yes. I could say yes and wish I said no. But I’m hoping that if I say yes, things will go even better than expected (because frankly, that’s a lot scarier than saying no).

Easter is coming. A new season is on its way. Even if the branches aren’t yet budding, even if the flowers have yet to bloom. My hope is not in my plans working out (there have been PLENTY of times where they haven’t), but in a God who takes death and uses it for His glory. 

Let our hearts gently turn, turn towards hope, love, and faith.

Signing off, 

Gigi