lent...

Last night I was talking with my great friend Meggerator after Community Group - we had chatted about the Oscars and what we were doing / not doing for lent and we landed on the topic of husbands as we SO OFTEN DO (we are both single and 29 and feeling all the feels of this season) and she made a really bold statement that made me shiver in my boots a little but also ignited a little fire in me in the best possible way. Meg said that she has been having a lot of conversations regarding her heart in this season with friends, and she will continue to do so. Then she asked herself a simple question - how many of those same conversations am I having with God. Her challenge was to spend this season of lent truly lamenting, pouring out that deeply rooted desire not just to those who can see and hear the heartbreak and agony of our longing for a husband, a family, the future we fully believe He has in store for us, but also to our Father who so lovingly understands our deepest ache and yearning. To spend intentional time journaling the heart and truly inviting Him into that space, potentially savoring this season that will undoubtedly mark who we become and recording the work He does as we give Him our hopes and dreams and pray over the man who will someday enter the stage.

I have had lots of these conversations with the Lord, but admittedly I haven’t written a single word of lament in a journal. Until last night. When I came home from my time with Meg I made a conscious decision to join her in the journey. To not give up something for lent, but to add something, to record the pain, to write the prayers, to make plain the heartache. Somehow writing it down feels scary, but also so very freeing. In the daylight there is hope and perhaps through that comes a new sense of possibility. Perhaps as I scribble and the tears undoubtedly fall, the grasp that feels so tight around my heart will loosen, perhaps the suffocation won’t feel quite as overwhelming, and I won’t see myself as complete wreckage. There is so much joy in my life. So much gratitude and so much hope. I am truly so thankful for so many reasons and yet there are so many tears, so many disappointments, so many buried dreams. For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. His ways are NOT OUR WAYS and I so desperately want to live His call for my life - I want His good far more than I want the earthly fulfillment of a husband and a family; nevertheless the loss of that dream threatens to choke out my ability to rest fully in Him. Perhaps through this time I will learn to lean into Him in a new way. Oh that this would be a time of letting go and finding restoration and release in the lover of my soul.