Lent Day 8: Monkey Hugs

For the past year, I've kept a journal next to my bed and dedicated myself to writing down one memory of Eddie each day that I'd like to hold on to. Baby years, childhood, passes so quickly and the tiny baby I used to nurse is now a boy running around and growing older each day.

Today I was writing about how much I love to cuddle with him in the morning and around nap time, when I heard a large crash in his room. A toy being thrown to the floor. The crash was followed with inevitable footsteps running full speed towards my door. He pushed it open with an ear-to-ear smile. His stuffed monkey, which we've named "monkey hugs" in tow. He just wanted to be close to me. That's it.

My reflections on God today leave me with the thinking about how we are called his children. How he watches us grow up and how he must enjoy the intimate time we spend with him in prayer. The book we have been reading on prayer has been talking about the fact that God chooses to respond to prayer. He chooses to change things based on whether we pray. Because, he wants us to pray. He knows what we need and he knows everything past, present and future. But he invites us to partake in shaping the world through both our actions and our prayers.

I see the image of Eddie coming to my door and flinging it open with a large grin and I feel a deep sense of joy. I can only imagine that God, in seeing us sincerely praying, is also filled with joy.

Lent Day 7: Walking with God

Today felt very "Lent" like. Technology didn't work. I sat around waiting for people to get back to me. Eddie was a pill and wore me out in the afternoon. It was a day where the wheels didn't quite turn right. At church, we had music practice and we picked out music for Good Friday. My devotions included the sacrifice of Issac and whether or not God changes his plan based on prayers. I'm left now at 10:30 tired and a bit confused.

But it feels right. It feels like a journey with God. Jesus in the wilderness. Abraham wondering. Me, starting to feel the first of my contractions in this pregnancy and knowing the mountain ahead that I am starting to climb. Like Jesus and Abraham. I have to trust God. I have to trust in what he's doing in and through me.... and I have to pray. I have to talk to God. Honestly and completely and through that conversation find the strength to submit myself to his will for my life.

Lent Day 6: Transforming emptiness into love

I have been spending more time in prayer and reading about prayer and wondering about the theology of prayer.  One thing that I am starting to see in my life is a changing and a melting of who I am into my prayers. While life stays invigoratingly disheveled, I am at peace to let it be on its own path. In my Old Testament reading, today was a survey of the life of Abraham. One of the main points that stuck out was the amount of wondering he did before drawing near to the land, the blessing, the offspring promised to him. Conversation with God along the way encouraged him through the journey. Conversation with God encourages me too.

The space, the emptiness, the waiting for God to act gives me more time to reflect on situations that demand me to be respond with love. If my pace was quicker. If my life simply resolved and I moved on to the next phase without this haze of wilderness I would not take notice to these situations. I would cast them off as something I didn't really have time to attend to. But this empty, pregnant time gives me the opportunity to see and to respond. Prayer gives me strength, wisdom and love and I find myself being transformed.

Lent Day 5: Grace

It's amazing how Lent continues to whirl around me. Sustained uncertainty in life is starting to make me smile because its just entirely fitting with the season. What I have noticed about today particularly is how much assurance I feel. Assurance that God will provide. Assurance that God will resolve things and an assurance that God is with me on this journey despite how confusing it seems.

Reading through my book on prayer, reading Genesis and listening to a series on Spiritual disciplines for Lent at church all at the same time has sent my mind racing. Theologically I feel very all over the map. Sometimes very secure in my faith and others feeling shaky that my understanding of God could come unglued by those deep nagging questions that never quite find answers.

However, as I lay in bed, reviewing the day I find myself deeply assured that even in the midst of my questions and doubts. In the midst of major life upheaval. In the midst of this Lenten journey there are another set of footsteps silent beside mine and I do not walk it alone. I stand on Grace and Grace assures me.

Lent day 4: Prayer

My day was focused around having a bbq to get to know some of the other young couples / parents from our church. It went well. 9 adults and 6 kids showed up and we all seemed to have a good time getting to know each other better.

In the prayer book that Ulrich and I are reading, the focus of tonight's section was on prayers' ability to turn your focus on what needs to be done and prompt you to do it.  As you ask for things, you meditate "well, how have I helped with that?"

Praying for other people empowers us to find mission. Who in our lives needs prayer? What do they need prayer for? Even if the situations in people's lives are far beyond our capacity to fix or resolve, the focus of praying for them connects us to them. Creates a compassion in our hearts for their situation and draws us into a place of openness and willingness. Then, take Jesus's command -- pray for your enemies....hmmm....

Lent Reflections Day 3: Uncertainty

I can feel the winds of change beginning to blow in my life -- stirring up a sort of uncomfortable uncertainty about the future. Our household, our church, my work situation, Ulrich's work situation, our family -- all are in the midst of some form of transformation and for now a veiled in a sort of uncertainty that feels very much like Lent.

I wonder why we go through these uncomfortable moments? Why does change and uncertainty (even when we know whatever happens will be good) feel so hard and uncomfortable.

I am trying to rest in the uncertainty and be at peace in it.

Lent Reflections Day 2: God's Will

As part of our Lenten practice, Ulrich and I are reading together and praying each night. Tonight's reading makes for a good blog post. We are currently reading from Philip Yancy's book on Prayer, which I highly recommend. What strikes me most from today's reading was a quote from Eugene Peterson who translated the Message.

Greek has a middle voice - something between passive and active "which describes the subjects as participating in the results of the action. It reads as a description for Christian prayer... I neither do it, nor have it done to me....

I will to participate in what is willed"

This to me is a great devotion for the journey of Lent. Preparing ourselves to participate in what is willed. Opening ourselves to join in what God is doing in our lives, whatever that may be. How can we, through prayer, find ourselves participating in God's will? In practice, how do we discern it and how does prayer move us from where we are to the place where God would have us be?

1st Day of Lent

It was an odd first day of Lent for me. The weather here was absolutely beautiful. Eddie ran around outside naked for a while and I sat and soaked up the sunlight, reflecting on Lent, God and the journey I will be taking for the next 40 days.

I spent the day entirely alone without much to do besides keep Eddie busy. It was on one hand beautiful and relaxing and on the other lonely and isolating. Entering into the wilderness. We have seasons in life and this time in Livermore has most definitely been a season of wilderness. Of wondering mostly alone trying to figure out what's next -- what should I be doing with my life? Who am I now?  These questions don't have quick or easy answers. I've been asking them since Ulrich and I got married but they took on new dimension after I lost my job and had Eddie and moved to a new town where we didn't know anyone and despite my best efforts I haven't been able to make a single close friend.

Lent heightens this feeling of wilderness, but each year a promise of finding God in Easter carries me through the wilderness time.