Day by Day for Lent

On Fat Tuesday, I received an email from a friend and former member--Linda. She wrote of several ways that she was looking at this impending Lenten journey--rebooting a computer, training for a marathon, learning a new habit, and an image from history, the Bonfire of the Vanities. I found them to be intriguing. She added some fuel to stoke the coals that have been smoldering. 

I will have to see what this Lent holds for me. Physically, it is the recovery period for the radiation treatments which ended on Fat Tuesday. Part of my Lenten discipline will be accepting that it takes the same amount of time to heal that it took to do the radiation: 6-1/2 weeks. By Easter, my stamina and skin should be somewhat resurrected. 

Then there is the matter of my spirit which has also taken a beating, but that has gone on for a good bit longer. In the matter of grief, I have heard that it takes about two years to work through the initial stages to come to a balance of some sort. It’s good to know that a new balance will come because just now I am caught between the reactions to anxiety--fighting, fleeing and care-taking, mostly the latter two, though I have been know to get feisty lately too.

What I think I need to learn from this physical recovery period during Lent is that the spiritual and emotional recovery period will be just as slow and deliberate. I can’t rush it no matter how much I want to. I want to jump to the new balance, but that’s just not how it works. Day by day, step by step, season by season, and all along the way learning to trust in God’s grace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.