40 Days

I am reading about the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan  with my children. This morning's lesson was about the spies going into Canaan and the reports they brought back. And the subsequent banishment to the wilderness for 40 years. A nice segue way into Lent.

We started talking about the 40s (days and years) in Scripture and resumed it at dinner.

Kyrie always asks "Why?" She has to wrestle with anything and then she holds tightly to anything she has done battle with and come out believing. It is pure exhaustion as a parent but also exactly what we want.

She is still trying to figure out Lent. She has her fists up, unlike years past, giving me the feeling that this is the year she will begin to care about it.

Ash Wednesday will kick off for Ben with a lesson about the Holocaust. It just worked out that way. We've been leading up to it with his study of this time period and he has been reading ahead and asking questions, so he is somewhat prepared. But it seems apt that we will discuss the ashes of a race of people on a day when we will have ashes crossed on our heads. Could there be any more important reason to humbly to accept the imposition of ashes than to be reminded that it could have been us in the gas chamber? More importantly, it could have been me tending the chamber?

In the bleakness of this winter, surrounded by Great Lakes setting records for freezing more than they have in decades (and possibly, centuries), I'm a little numb. Lent comes at a time when the thaw can begin, the slow slow drip of my icy soul preparing itself anew for the joy at the end.

Time to look inward with new intensity for 40 days.