The start of a season

Last night I had the privilege of being to share a sacred season with my daughter.  The same way that the season had been shared with me as I grew up from a baby to a young lady. 

It is a challenge to share faith.  And I know that many people find fault in faith.  And yet, things are defined in my life by my faith.  And yesterday was a day to be reminded that we are all bound together with out faith.  It might not be your faith in God.  It might be as simple as your faith in the fact that the sun will rise each morning.  Wherever you hold your faith, it is a start of the new season for us all...

Within that season, we seek spring.  And in my faith I step forward to celebrate Lent.  And while Lent to me is something that I just know and accept, for others it might be a foreign concept.  So, if you don't know what Lent is... check out Wikipedia here...  And yet even those words can't describe the revelations that I had last night at church.

My pastor was talking about grace and belonging.  Now the first is a concept that I know we all struggle with on many levels.  The sense of belonging is something that I struggle with each and every day.  I feel like I am the person who just stays exactly where I am told to and watch all the action around me.  Until last night I would have thought that I was the only person in the whole world who struggled with belonging.  And to listen to my pastor tell a story of a time when he felt like he didn't belong, really got me to thinking.  That maybe, we all have stories of times when we don't belong that we keep locked up safe inside our minds.

And it amazes me to think that deep down inside that everyone really has the ability to understand what a woman faces when they make the step forward to change the way their life has been.  To take a step forward away from the abuse that she suffers in silence.  And that pain that they hold inside, we all need to provide a place where they can start a new season and feel safe...  A place where the stories that you hold inside of your heart and mind are shared, not to show the people around you hold good you are, or even what you have accomplished...  But a place to show those around you that they can risk themselves and open the dark corners of secrets...  and begin to find the words that move them forward.  And with those words, maybe they can start to feel like they belong...  and with that belonging they might find this new season that offers them grace...

And my prayer would be to teach them about my season of Lent, but first we have to give them an ability to be able to breathe...