I am a words girl. Always have been. I spent many-an-extra-hours in various sympathetic math teachers’ classrooms, laboring with them over how to show my work on math problems that I could never fully wrap my head around the logic of. A geometric proof does what again? Solve for ‘x’ and for ‘y’? It was the ‘y’ that usually did me in. Beyond the simple plus and minus work of numbers, I never grew too comfortable around them. Oh but the words! Give me Native Son and a thesis statement and the freedom to craft thoughts and my mind felt like I was curling up with a soft blanket.

Given my unremarkable (dismal is more appropriate) history with numbers, I am, perhaps, the most shocked of all at how much counting I really do these days. I’m not finding square roots or making whole numbers out of fractions, but it seems like numbers are on my mind quite a lot.

I’m a counter. I count minutes and I count likes. I count children and I count approval. I quantify my day in so many ways—too many— forgetting that what I am often counting does not actually add up to anything real. I count accomplishments and I count failures, hoping that the former has more tallies in the column at 9:00pm. I count what I have based on what I see, and it is pride, and I sometimes count what others have, also based on what I see, and it is comparison. I’m always counting.

Today is the first day of lent: a sacrificial season of the liturgical calendar that holds the space of the 46 days before Easter Sunday. It’s a beautiful season for so many reasons, but one I have stripped of its meaning with the hint of ‘I grew-up Catholic guilt’ that still lingers, coupled with my relentless score-keeping. I’ve spent many a Lenten seasons subtracting: first it was ice cream, then sugar, next social media, and I’ve even gone for all television whatsoever. I’ve been rather crafty when it comes to my numbers during lent—technically Sundays are a respite from the 46-day total, and God knows it is also March Madness so all television besides sports became the rule. I gave up ice cream but made up for it in cookie dough. And sugar—never made it past 48 hours on that one. Add, subtract, put a few tallies in the “good” column, and call it lent; that has far too often been my stride through this season.

It seems I have been missing the point.

The Lenten season is about sacrifice, and it is equally about repentance. But I think above all, it is about getting serious with our own hearts about what we are waiting and counting for.

The arc of this 46 days ends at the cross. We hold the space between now and then with reverence and with an intent to know who God is through sacrifice, but what I am certain I have done wrong in all my counting is relegate the importance of those things to only, or mostly, these 46 days. Lent becomes a talking point or a challenge, a hashtag or something to accomplish, when really all it was ever meant to look like was me on my knees in humility, knowing that all my numbers could never add up to perfect.

But Jesus never asked for perfect, he asked for repentance. And I have so much to repent. The counting, the pride, the comparison, the lack of belief in the face of hard things, the lack of boldness in the face of wrong things. Choosing to scroll rather than open His word, choosing to vent rather than take things to Him in prayer. Making an enemy of my husband while I stand on the mountain of an issue that was only ever meant to be a discussion on how to sweep away the dirt in front of us. I could go on with this; I have to look no further than the day behind me to find my need for repentance. And it is a need far greater than 46 days.

I love lent because of the intentionality it brings, and I am even giving something up if only for the discipline to spend time with Him when I want to turn to that one thing. But mostly, lent is about repentance, sitting with my great need for, praising God that he allows it, learning about its pain and its beauty, about its grip and its freedom. Yes, lent is about repentance because life is about repentance. The arc of our lives ends the same place that lent does, at the foot of the cross. And my heart can hear Jesus leaning in and whispering, “Stick with what you know, Katie. Grab your words and come sit with me, because we have so much to talk about, and nothing to count.”

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning..." Lamentations 3:22-23

Easter Sunday has come and gone.  This season of lent, a forty-day stretch that I have “observed” in one way, shape, or form for the last twenty-nine years has officially ended, so we can all go back to our coffee and chocolate and television now.  I did not give anything up this year, mainly because I’ve only once been able to do that—it was ice cream in 2003, and basically it was a six-week diet of sorts with no spiritual implications for my eighteen-year-old self—but I did commit to an awesome lent devotion and to praying every day. 

Wait.  You don’t already pray every day?  The answer is no, not like I should be praying.  When I’m tired or weary or stressed I easily revert back to a six year old and start every Jesus encounter with “Dear God, please give/please bless/please be with…” basically a short running bullet point list of the things I need him to do for me.  I wanted this Lenten season to start something new in me: a new way to pray, a new desperate need for prayer, a new belief in its power.

And what happened was sort of that.  I still pray for the things I need think I need, but the last few weeks for me have been about one thing: repentance.  And that word, with all its weightiness, is changing the way I pray.  And I hope, the way I live, too.  When you sit with the scriptures and read about Jesus’ message, about his trial, about the way he was mocked and tortured and killed and how he never once opened his mouth with words indicating any sort of defensive posture, the only possible response is to repent. 

So I did, often, in my words and prayers.  I’m good with words, comfortable with them.  I can craft them and string them together in ways that sure make it seem like God has done a new thing in my life and heart.  And, oh, how I wish that could be enough.  But then like any good teacher, God gave me plenty of opportunities to practice repentance in real life, if only to remind myself how much I still need him and the grace he reached down from the cross and handed to me.   

I had a misunderstanding with a friend, and because, unlike Jesus I always take a defensive posture when questioned, it took me about twenty-four hours to even consider seeing her point of view.  I had hurt her feelings, yet wasted a day on my own case.  Repentance.

My daughter has dug her heels in and declared war on potty training.  She is twenty-seven months old, and more than once I’ve been so mad at her for another accident that I have treated her like a terrorist who purposely sabotaged my day.  Repentance.

My husband has needed encouragement for the leadership roles he taken on, and at times I’ve picked his methods apart and put them back together the way I would do it.  Repentance. 

A judgment about someone or something I know only the very surface about.  Repentance.

Gossip, comparison, jealousy, withholding my words because I don’t want to celebrate someone else at the moment.  Repentance.

All of life, every day, I’m starting to see how much I need repentance.  I often think that when one is a Christian for a long time, repentance can be the first thing that falls off the cart and sits on the side of the road.  Sometimes we travel days, weeks, months without realizing we left it behind some time ago.  What I’m learning is that I need to hold tight to repentance, not because it should be a somber reminder of my junk, or because I want to turn into a melancholic who always feels guilty for something.  No, the opposite actually.  I want to hold on to repentance because it keeps my heart near the cross, that place where grace poured down from heaven in the man from Nazareth, Jesus.

I truly want with all of my heart to be a “good” follower of Jesus.  But that has turned in to striving on so many levels, and I can’t keep up with my own efforts sometimes.  What repentance is teaching me is that striving does not get me closer to Jesus or win me more points with him than the next gal.  More points?  That’s not even a thing in God’s eyes.  When I start with repentance, I’m already at the cross, which is as close to the heart of Jesus that I could possibly be.  Everything else I do with my life is from there, not to get me there.  And that is a whole different thing.

Today, my prayers begin with repentance.  And sometimes that is as far as they get, because as I think of all the things I could start to list for God, I realize I have little need for anything more than the grace that comes with a humble heart.

Today is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of the Lenten season.  While lent has is roots in Catholicism, it is a season of fasting, penance, and reflection leading up to resurrection Sunday—Easter— observed by many Christians.  This Wednesday is 46 days before Easter; 40 fasting days according to the Catholic tradition that Sundays, which are not days of fast, are excluded.  The heart behind this season of lent is to mirror the 40 days of fasting Jesus did as preparation for the beginning of his ministry.  And while there are no specific passages in the Bible that denote a special meaning to the number 40, it is a number that appears often in scripture.

Noah spent 40 days and 40 nights on the ark as God poured rain down on the earth.

Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights.

Moses interceded in prayer on Israel’s behalf for 40 days and nights.

The Israelites spent 40 days spying in Canaan, the Promised Land.  Then they wandered in the desert for 40 years before God brought them in to it.

And there were 40 days between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension in to Heaven. 

Forty, it seems to me, represents a kind of fullness is scripture; the amount of time God takes to complete something big. As I think about these things, about the faith and diligence to pray or fast for 40 days or to believe that a promise would truly be fulfilled after 40 years, it is not lost on me that I rarely persevere in anything that long.  I’m not yet 40 years old, so I don’t have a barometer for that kind of big picture faith.  And I’ve tried giving up (fasting) chocolate or ice cream or even television for lent in the past, but then there is March Madness or a friend brings me fresh cookies and I make all sorts of exceptions, and I’m all, “well, I’ll try again next year.” 

I love the idea of fasting, of going without something, so that we can tangibly make room for Jesus to enter in to that space.  And maybe that is exactly what God is asking from you during the next 40 days.  But I also love the idea of being diligent toward something, of being faithful to intercede in prayer on someone’s behalf, of giving of myself in a new way.  This year, this Lenten season for me is about quiet space, about faith, and about prayer.

I write as a lifeline, as a way to process, as a discipline, and as a means to really understand what I think.  But what I don’t do well is pray. I write prayers, but far too often I don’t stop and speak them, whether out loud or in my heart.  From this Wednesday until the day we celebrate Jesus’ victory over death, my heart wants, LONGS, to pray for my marriage, for my children, for my family, for my friends, for my city, and for this world.  The headlines have become numbing to me: Christians beheaded, hundreds of girls kidnapped, another war on the horizon… and here, this season of preparation for the darkest day in history followed three days later by the greatest.  And I want to pray like I believe in the greatest day.  A disciplined season of making room for quiet before the Lord, just him and me, begging for the faith I know I need for this life.  I’m just so scared without it.  But I think I’m supposed to be.  When the Spirit of God is not there, fear is.  But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  I want more than anything for him to complete a big, freeing faith in me.   

Let it be so.