“It’s bad out here.”
My colleague, a therapist, reached for her third cup of coffee that day. She’d been fifteen minutes late to our coffee date. Unlike her. And she wasn’t wearing makeup, which was also unlike her. I asked if everything was okay.
She shook her head. “It’s just nonstop with work. Appointments, appointments, appointments. Emergency calls and appointments too. Winter’s hard on people. Really hard.”
She’s not wrong. This is a difficult season.
Even the most resilient among us might be stir-crazy: I’ve been eyeball-deep in snow for weeks, and rural areas where I live still haven’t had the blessing of a plow. It’s a dangerous time of year, too: a season for slips and falls and broken bones and car accidents. Bitter cold, no real opportunity to go outside, curtailed activities and dove-gray skies increase frustration, resentment, exhaustion.
And that’s without even addressing those for whom the season exacerbates anxiety and depression.
I’ve always loved the colder months, myself. Fall and winter are cozy times for me, when I—God willing—get to spend more time doing the things I love doing. But even I start to get antsy mid-February, yearning for just a little more daylight, a splash of sun, the ability to venture outside without layering beanies and balaclavas and boots.
And soon, bearing its duties of austerity and penance, arrives Lent.
That’s how it often seems, anyway. The question “what will you give up?” emerges in Christian conversations this time of year. People discuss fasting, repentance, abandoning meat or coffee or doomscrolling. We get our pancake game on for Shrove Tuesday; we mark the Ash Wednesday service on our calendars.
But I wonder if a different approach might be called for, this season.
It seems to me that people often conceptualize Lent as a time of barrenness, paring-down, simplicity. And I suppose, if we think only about the act of fasting, it is or it can be. But we often forget the second half of the equation, which is that this time and these acts of fasting are meant to draw us to God. Yes, in penance and reflection—but such acts need not be joyless. And in fact, knowing our God as we do, should they not perhaps be deeply joyful?
I’ve been approaching Lent this year as almost a sort of retreat: a time of deep Sabbath for the soul, if not necessarily from work. I am going to engage in fasting, of course, but I am also going to add things to my life in spaces carved out by that austerity: practices and moments that bring me closer to God and give me joy in God.
Because God has been working on me, and I don’t know what to make of it.
This is as it should be. Only God knows what God is doing. But I have noticed enough patterns in my life that I can recognize His hand moving toward something. Events, circumstances are shifting. My own thoughts are changing, along with my desires. It’s a strange experience, but it’s also not unfamiliar: before I experience change, or God calls me to something, I’ve noticed He has a habit of slipping loose the bonds of my comfort. And so, now.
Very little is in my control—in my own local world, in my state, in my nation. And I cannot control God. If change is coming, I have no sense of what it will be or mean, or how much I’ll like it. When God works in this way it often takes long years for me to understand, in retrospect, what was happening all the while. But I can control my curiosity, and my attention, and the space I allow God in my life. I can open myself up to being God-haunted. I can saturate myself in godly things and make more room for those godly things by kicking out other, less-godly things.
And I can do this not as a transaction—because I don’t know precisely what might emerge from it—but because I trust God that any time spent on God is never wasted.
The truth is, while I don’t struggle with seasonal affective disorder or the perils of the season the way some do, I am bone-tired. And I have reached an age where it’s become clearer than ever that all of the world’s promises are false and hollow. My work and my calling cannot be my idol; neither can my comfort. To learn to love God better and love my neighbor better I have to be taught and formed.
And Lent provides that formation.
When my husband and I left town for a long weekend recently, I found myself surprised by the lack of itinerary. There was nothing to do: no demands pulling at us. With all that time, we enjoyed each other’s company. We talked a lot and we laughed a lot. The relationship was enough.
And so with this coming season. Austerity, yes, but in the service of love. We fast, yes, and reflect, but we can’t do that without also accepting and acknowledging the joys of grace and mercy and relationship. At a time when many of us are worn down to the bare nub after a festive Advent and Christmas season, Lent can serve as a balm for the weary soul: a chance, even an excuse, to return to what matters, to claim our time back for the first priority we often slip.
Forty days of fasting.
Forty days of relationship.
What a relief.
Samaritan's Song 