Daily Renewal

A Lenten Hope

For Coptic Orthodox Christians, Lent started two weeks ago. I hate to admit that I am already exhausted as I enter this third week of the Great Fast. I guess that’s a good indication that I am benefiting?

Last year, I entered Lent unknowingly apathetic. I was in between my second and third trimesters, recovering from chronic bronchitis and pneumonia, a night in the hospital from the stomach flu, and in the midst of my dad’s estate work. I tried to fast but couldn’t, and even my Lenten reading was stagnant. Of course, instead of giving myself grace and humbly asking the Lord for His guidance, I became bitter and jealous. Why was I letting this happen to me? Why couldn’t I just let go and give God my burdens? My pride and ego were at an all-time high. We couldn’t even experience the entirety of the Pascha Divine Liturgy because I had gotten sick again and couldn’t stop coughing.

I needed rest.

You see, one of the things that grows our ego is our ability to solve problems. One of my favourite names for the ego is in fact…the problem solver.

Excerpt from Belovedness: The Song of Elijah

Of course, that’s where I was last year. I was trying to solve every problem by myself. I couldn’t even resolve my health issues. And yet, repeatedly, God showed me that these were not my problems to solve. He knew that I needed rest, and I wonder sometimes if that’s why a specific chain of events occurred after my dad’s passing.

A few weeks before Lent this year, I resolved to completely surrender to God and continuously remind myself of that resolution. This surrender has been a work in progress, and I’ve failed many times. BUT I keep trying and that’s what counts, right?

Trust that God sees you. He hears you and feels for you. So your little matters are very big before His love and your big matters are very small before His might.

St. Pope Kyrillos VI

Here comes my instinct to kick into my academic brain and search for articles about surrendering to God. In all seriousness, I think about the saints and how they surrendered their entire lives to Him, especially Baba Kyrillos (Pope Cyril VI) whose feast day we celebrate today, March 9. The all-or-nothing piece of my brain cannot see that type of surrender with a family. In the next few months, I plan on writing about married saints and those with families. How did they figure out the balance? How did their lives manifest with the Lord? But I digress…

This Lent, I resolve to commit to this surrender.

I will tell you that by day three of this commitment, I fell into a huge snare. Oh, hello, egotistical pride. Nice to meet you again. In my youth, I heard about spiritual snares during Lent. I didn’t understand them because Lent was hyper focused on fasting for me then. Fasting was hard for me. I struggled with eating. I attended a Catholic School and would scoff at my friends, complaining about abstaining from meat on Fridays. I can’t eat meat, fish, or dairy for 55 days, I would exclaim, puffed with pride. I didn’t know any better. Food was the focus in my household and no one explained the meaning behind the Lenten services and prayers. In my early teens, I can’t remember when exactly, I attended the Holy Week services with my mom and aunt, and I felt something tug at my heart. What was that feeling? However, I quickly became distracted with friends and the cute chanter I wanted to impress and immediately neglected that tug at my heart. Funny how I remember it now, almost 25 years later.

Photo Credit: Unknown

Lately, I have felt this same tug at my heart. Come back to me. I am here, waiting. Though I feel I never left Him, I know that I can draw much closer. Much closer than I can imagine. I have contemplated on the above image. My fragmented love and self creates this image of Christ who wholly and completely loves me - who waits to complete me and fill in those cracks. I cannot set up any expectations for Lent this year. I can only approach it one day at a time, focusing each day on my Beloved. If I want to be salt, I need to allow the preservation process to occur, and that takes time. If I want to be love, then I need to cut off any paths leading toward my pride, ego, and despondency. If I want the Kingdom of Heaven in my heart, then I must learn how to trust God and learn how to follow His will.

I wrote recently that for Christ to increase, I must decrease.

I wrote it during a time of reflection and prayer. I am a Type A personality who has experienced situations causing a need for control. I also set unrealistic expectations for myself. As such, I experience a lot of anxiety. If I want Christ to abide in me and me in him, all of that must fall by the wayside. I need to surrender and allow Him to plant the seeds of His love in my heart.

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26

Last year, I took a course on vocation and purpose as part of my graduate studies in theology. In this course, I had to write my vocational autobiography and a vision for my vocation.

I have known since a young age that I was called to serve, to dedicate my life to the Lord. Now, at the ripe age of 38, I envision my entire being as a continuous unceasing prayer to the Lord - one dedicated to serving everyone I encounter seeing them as icons of Christ in the world. I am called to lead a life of ascetic motherhood that integrates into my marriage. I am called to lead a life in which Christ abides in me and I in Him.

I wrote this statement around this time last year. While this desire has not changed, I find myself exploring it even further, pursuing a deeper sense of it. At the end of my vocational biography, I wrote the following:

I used to be scared to hear my calling, but now I recognize that I have never felt at home anywhere else. The Lord is my home. At this point on my path, I am trying to discern where He is calling me to lead, and after a switch from Marriage and Family Therapy to Theological Studies, I am beginning to understand this a bit more clearly. What I know at this point is that I need to continue that inner transformation He started so long ago. The Lord has been renewing me daily preparing me for the calling to which I have been called. Now, I need to open myself up to embrace it and listen to Him.

This Lent, though I am taking it one day at a time, I pray for transformation and for truly abiding in the Lord as He sees fit for my life right now. Please keep me in your prayers, dear readers.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day”

2 Corinthians 4:16