Lent is generally a season of repentance and renewal. For me, I try to spend more time with God and usually commit to practicing a particular spiritual discipline. This year Lent come up quickly as February flew by completing completing college financial aid forms for my daughter and doing our taxes as well as trying to complete my reading for class the 1st weekend in March. Allan, Jane and I went to church on Ash Wednesday sang, listened and received ashes. It was a solemn, blessed service. Yet rather than being a beginning of renewal; it was the calm before the storm. On her 18th birthday, March 7th, my daughter moved out lock, stock and barrel while we were gone leaving only a note and has not contacted us since. While we know Jane is safe and is doing what she needs to do; it is very painful.
I have spent this Lenten season barely able to pray, crying, and screaming in anger. Where are you God? has been the question I have been sitting with and now as I go to Fort Smith, Arkansas to spend the Triduum(the 72 hours before Easter) and Easter at Scholastica Abbey; I go seeking God.
I go knowing that every day I must give Jane to God and focus on where God is calling me.
I go seeking healing so that I can carry out the ministry each day that I am called to do and that I can be present for Allan, for my friends and for others who I encounter on my path.
As I have agonized over Jane being gone and have begun the process have letting go; I have come to recognize that this is what God does for us; he gives us free will. Yet God continues to thirst for us and wants a relationship with us. God allows us to go our own way but longs for our return and grieves over our wrongful deeds. As I contemplate Jesus; the one who was both fully human and fully divine; I face head on the mystery of the cross and resurrection. It is much more complicated than my human brain can understand. As Allan and I watched the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, I reflected greatly on Jesus' humanity and how perhaps he wrestled with his divinity more than we know. Jesus had to come to terms with going to Jerusalem and dying on the cross. In a similar way, I have to come to terms with letting of go of Jane and accept that God will bring redemption in his own timing.
For now, as I prepare for Resurrection; I allow my sins and my suffering to be crucified. I say God, I desire your living water, fill with me and use me according to your will. Have a blessed Easter.
I have spent this Lenten season barely able to pray, crying, and screaming in anger. Where are you God? has been the question I have been sitting with and now as I go to Fort Smith, Arkansas to spend the Triduum(the 72 hours before Easter) and Easter at Scholastica Abbey; I go seeking God.
I go knowing that every day I must give Jane to God and focus on where God is calling me.
I go seeking healing so that I can carry out the ministry each day that I am called to do and that I can be present for Allan, for my friends and for others who I encounter on my path.
As I have agonized over Jane being gone and have begun the process have letting go; I have come to recognize that this is what God does for us; he gives us free will. Yet God continues to thirst for us and wants a relationship with us. God allows us to go our own way but longs for our return and grieves over our wrongful deeds. As I contemplate Jesus; the one who was both fully human and fully divine; I face head on the mystery of the cross and resurrection. It is much more complicated than my human brain can understand. As Allan and I watched the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, I reflected greatly on Jesus' humanity and how perhaps he wrestled with his divinity more than we know. Jesus had to come to terms with going to Jerusalem and dying on the cross. In a similar way, I have to come to terms with letting of go of Jane and accept that God will bring redemption in his own timing.
For now, as I prepare for Resurrection; I allow my sins and my suffering to be crucified. I say God, I desire your living water, fill with me and use me according to your will. Have a blessed Easter.
