Journeying

I love Lent...for the first week or so.  At that point I am still strong in the commitments I've made, energized and somber.  That all changes by Palm Sunday.  Even as I watch my little ones weaving their way around the Sanctuary, waving their palms and shouting "Hosanna!," I'm ready to be done.

The kids took sick over the weekend.  By the time the sun peeked over the ridge of the barn out back this morning, all 5 were sick.  Just in time for Holy Week.

Irritated at the thought of my plans for Holy Week being derailed, I find myself positively grousing.  Really?  This is how this is going to go?  Breathing treatments again for the littlest one, tag team nighttime parenting, jagged coughs waking the baby at 3 am and blazing fevers?

I had plans of natural egg dyes.  Of knitting a few more of these for Easter baskets.  Of scrubbing the house top to bottom in time for Passover.

I pour my second cup of coffee while jiggling a coughing, crying baby on my hip.  The coffee splashes on the floor I had hoped to steam mop today.  The baby buries his face in my shoulder while Jonah wails from the couch "I feel so bad!"

In my self involvement, I find myself bargaining.  "Not this week, please?  Little League starts tomorrow, we have dinner with friends planned for Wednesday.  Good Friday we want to go to services at the Cathedral in Detroit.  Please?  Could we just reschedule this for a different time?  I wanted this Holy Week to be special..."


And so this, this is the final push of my Lenten journey this year.  Weeks after the novelty of saying "no, thank you" to sweets and reading my devotional has worn off, I'm upset at being asked to sing the hard hallelujah.  Perhaps this is what He planned for me, this Easter.  To learn how to let go of my vice grip on what I think Lent, Easter, faith and joy should look like.  To pick up my cross and follow along.

So I pull out the quilts, and wipe little noses with flannel.  Brew tea by the jugful.  Hold each one as much as I can.


To be a Christian is to be a little Christ.  You'd think, after 20-odd years of claiming that name, I would have learned by now.

This is what this Lent is teaching me.