Lenten Journey

I don’t want to rush through my grieving,
my Lenten journey.
I don’t want to rush to the comfort of “freedom from pain”
or “life everlasting.”
I need those things,
(for how can I survive each dark day without them?)
but I do not want to rush there.

I need to spend time in tears,
time with the weight of loss,
time feeling the vast emptiness within.
I need to hear and tell the stories,
to deeply feel the significance of the life,
and what it is to have it gone,
how my love will never again be expressed
or returned
in the same way,
before I can celebrate its new beginnings.

I need to hear the silence
where a voice once spoke, and laughed
and challenged and scolded and sang,
I need to hear it echo around my heart,
each deep listening finding only the softness of silence,
before I can join in the song of halleluiah and joy.

Without my pain,
I cannot know comfort,
without my grief,
I don’t understand peace,
without walking with the intimacy of death,
spending time in those dark shadows,
I won’t understand how brilliant is the light.

I don’t want to rush through my grieving,
for in the loss,
the pain,
I find passionate awareness
of my desperate need for resurrection.

I don’t want to rush through my grieving,
for I want to feel the full magnitude,
see the complete glory of the good news of Easter,
experience the resonating joy of an empty tomb.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them
light has shined.” Isaiah 9:2

This is the journey of Lent,
the path we followers of Christ take:
to set time aside and remember not just the life,
but the suffering and the dying,
and the emptiness Christ left behind
when he surrendered his spirit
and died upon the cross.
A death taken on for our sakes
so that we can know something more than darkness,
so we can receive what is offered:
the life that only comes through Christ.

This is my journey toward hope,
the path I walk in faith,
the journey that takes me through darkness
and silence
toward the glorious promise revealed to us
through Christ on Easter morning.

Already, I can hear the whispers . . .
Christ lives!

[Thank you to all who prayed for us and supported us following the loss of my brother and Robert's father. It meant the world to us!]