Ash Wednesday

So I'm just home from Ash Wednesday service at church and I'm exhausted.  I forget from year to year how draining Ash Wednesday services can be when you are an assisting minister for both services.  I love and dread Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent.  It's my time of introspection and reflection.  Some of the wilderness journeys are harder than others.  This year I had a feeling of apprehension that I have not had before.  The last seven months have been a wilderness journey for me like I have never had before.  A part of me fears that I will experience something else, and I just don't have the strength.  I'm lonely and I'm low tonight, so all I can do is through myself in the arms of God and pray for strength and endurance.  I wanted to blog this tonight because I want to capture it, and on Easter Sunday I want to be able look back and see the joy in the Resurrection.  I do know that because of the end of the Lenten story, I will stand with God and be with Gar again.  This does give me hope.

There was another thing that was going on tonight.  I felt like God was tickling the edge of my consciousness, a tantalizing thought, just out of my grasp that I could not see.  So I wait patiently.  And so the Lenten journey begins, a time of darkness and yet the promise of hope.  A time of Christ's great sacrifice and our great gain.  I know that I do not walk alone, I walk with God, and for this I give thanks.