Space For God

“Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

—Matthew 28:20

When Aaron and I gave up TV and movies for Lent, the pain when I left my job was excruciating. Although I have not had this impulse before or since, if I’m being completely honest, I wanted to be self-destructive. I wanted to act out physically what was boiling over inside me. But I couldn’t even think about doing anything that would hurt the baby. So I waddled around and took my prenatal vitamins, I ate eggs and cheese and drank cranberry juice, and I shuffled through that season clear-minded, wide awake, unmedicated, unshielded.

What I believed at the outset that I needed from Lent was to create a space for God’s voice and presence in my life. God bloomed into my quiet house and my broken heart like yeast in bread, leavening and changing everything. If I had known that my life would be sliced open so deeply, I would never have chosen the quiet. But that’s the magic of Lent, that you sign yourself up for something, hoping that God will slide something new into your life, and when he does, it’s never what you thought, and never what would have been easy, and always just the right thing.