A Word From My Friends

Lent is supposed to be a time when you give up things, when you fast and repent, I believe? For the kingdom of God is near? And, sure, I believe that the kingdom of God rolls in with thunderous announcement on Easter and I know that my heart could use some preparing, some lot of preparing, before it can rise again from the dead on Easter day, but this Lent has not yet been the same type of preparation that others have been and I'm fairly certain there's a good reason for that. I'm still trying to suss out what that is, but I believe the reason is there and that's a step farther than I've gone in the past few months, so Lent's already doing its job.

I didn't get ashes on Wednesday, but I did go to a seminar and a games night and to see Deadpool and each of those things in their own way breathed a kind of life into me. I went to communion on Thursday as a way of making up for the liturgy I'd missed the day before and the songs and the homily and the sacrament all felt like home in the best way possible. On Friday I found myself without any helpful words of my own but with piles of words from my good friends. I am so proud that we grew into the people we've become.

I've got some processing and some thinking and really, truly and honestly, a lifetime's worth of reading to do, so today I'd like to share the words that came across my life on Friday, and on Saturday afternoon.

My beautiful friend Noelle is writing a blog this Lent about singleness and dating and being a Christian twenty-something and it's so life-giving to hear someone else say the words you've been thinking and feeling but are unable to express. Check it out here, starting with I'm giving up dating for Lent.

My also beautiful, also wonderful friend Sara Beth took time to write about the struggle of giving up coffee for Lent as a pastor who's still working through her ordination papers, which sounds so specific that it would not have any applicable lessons for others in different walks of life, but the grace and community she highlights can do nothing but make me smile. I'm hoping facebook will let you read about that if you click here.

A friend of mine from summer camp in high school who's working as a hospital chaplain has a blog post on the Alliance of Baptists blog about the power of poetry in his life in ministry that just floored me brought a whole perspective back into my world. You can read that post here.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to a one-hour spoken word poetry show about happiness, a sentence that I'm surprised that I'm still surprised to type, and it was wonderful. This is one of the poems that Agnes Török did that I'm quite happy to share with everyone here. Her TedX talk at St. Andrew's is also spot-on and worth a listen.

In a way, I'm exceedingly glad that one of my love languages is language. There doesn't seem to be any lack of words in my world. But it can be hard to find those words that speak the things you want and need to hear and the only way I can describe the way these words found their way into my life this week is blessing. I'm so happy to have these blessings come out of the woodwork and into my heart and hopefully, there's something here for you too!