Lent is here.
I have words to wrestle with as I wrestle with God. This season is a gift as I ask God to recalibrate my faith after months – no, years – of loss. Not just loss of people I love, but loss through disillusionment, loss of energy, loss of motivation in work.
The words – which I would have brought up at the start of 2024, except that the fog of sadness and weariness clung too tightly to my brain – are SILENCE, REST, and BEYOND.
“Silence” and “rest” are probably obvious; I have been in desperate need of both for some time. But “beyond” just came to me, as in going beyond this earthly plane, beyond work and career, beyond the stifling aspects of the Church, beyond the expectations of others that have governed me throughout my life.
I’m setting up a couple of retreat days later this month to live in my head and think about these things. That time will align with some long-overdue medical appointments. Lest one thinks that I’m using the holy season of Lent as merely a self-improvement time, I pursue these things to find the strength I need to pursue whatever it is God wants me to learn and be. Not the Church, not the MAGA culture warriors who lead my parish, not Catholic Twitter – but God.
I look forward to time with Him this season in hopes that I can connect with Him without the filters and fog of toxic theology in whatever time I have left on this earth. God help me.