It feels so suited and risky to sit in Lent. The season is marked as this movement towards Easter, and in that movement it is also a time where the days are lengthening. And even the thought of that makes me pause. Am I ready for that? Because I have been wearing winter this year. And in this city, especially, it feels like this season is also movement towards light. Our days sometimes seem to hardly even move to light in the winter months - you can wake to the thickest clouds that cover all the blue and spend the day spitting raindrops and the day returns to dark before many offices actually close and children are barely out of school, making 8pm feel like midnight. This year that darkness offered some shelter and allowed me to tuck myself away because no one is looking for me out there. The city hibernates.

"...I get the sentiment, especially if we view Lent primarily as 40 days of rigorous, clenched teeth discipline. However, Lent offers a profound gift - the possibility of shedding clunky baggage, of releasing old wounds, of returning to a simplicity we crave but have difficult embracing. Lent hands us a solid reason to resist the many distractions, impulses and confusions that own us, even though we cringe each time we recognize their tyranny. Lent gives us permission to cut away messy entanglements, to reduce the noise. Lent arrives as a cleanse for the soul. Lent invites us to shed everything that inhibits our joy." Winn Collier

A movement towards light. Half of me says, Thank you Jesus, and the other half thinks.... not so fast. My wounds are still too fresh. I like the noise. In fact, I feel like the high time campaign season, a winning football and basketball team are just for me, and that Adele put out her latest new tracks this fall just in time for nightly Adele hour at my house. CNN and she can be my background soundtrack to the loud but gentle waves of grief that this season has found me.

I discovered that actually in February we are gaining about 2 1/2 minutes of daylight each day. And that is a pace i can reckon with - and actually seems like the generous movement of a kind & creative God. I am not shoved into a healing or rigorously pulling myself out of the patterns of these days, but invited day by day to offer more space to life, to thought, to light. I can still have Adele hour and Panther games (well not technically Panther games anymore ):) and be in process of moving towards the new season. So with that, I welcome what is to come. I welcome new joy.