I've got friends.

There are two things I detest about being sick:  One, feeling so awful that it's hard to think about anything else.  Two, needing help.


I'm a missionary, but I'm also from the White family.  


That means that I am here to help.  And that I don't need any myself.  


I have been sick since Friday.  When I woke up this morning still feeling unbearably terrible, I was in tears with disappointment and frustration.  I still have little voice, my head is pounding, my throat still aches, I have a major sinus migraine and my nose is raw from constant blowing.  (oh yeah.  I'm beautiful these days.)


And as you probably know, Sofie isn't content and sleepy all day because I feel like I'd like to be hit by a truck.  Lily doesn't want to sit quietly in her room, looking at books.  They want, and need, Mommy: friend, healer, cook, cleaner, playmate, feeder, snuggler, chaser, reader, teacher, entertainer Mommy.  I've still had a lot of classes to teach.  Today was still payday to prepare.  Everybody's still gotta eat!


I headed to class at 7:30 grouchy, and by 9:30 I did something we White's never do: quit.  I just couldn't grade papers, sort payroll, meet with students and process invoices anymore.  But I also couldn't go home and get jumped on and spilled on and fussied.  


My head hurt so badly that I had to squint walking home, but I snuck around to the back door, hoping to make it to the bedroom without the girls seeing me.  Gertha and Micheline were supposed to work until 11, so I could lay down for a good hour without encroaching on them.


"MOMMY!" screamed Lily and Sofie started to cry the moment she saw me..."Ma-Ma!"


And you know what?  Gertha and Micheline helped me.  I didn't even ask them to.  They saw how much I was struggling, swooped the girls up and happily took them to the cafeteria to eat fried chicken and to ride on the food cart "tap-tap".  


I woke up feeling even more congested when they returned at 11:15.  I fed the baby and put her down, only to realize that my women's Bible study was at the door, to begin NOW.  


"Oh, my goodness," I apologized, trying to figure out how I could possibly lead.  


"What are you doing up?" Granny asked immediately, pushing past me into the house and pointing down the hall.  "Go to bed!"


"But I want to study..." I said weakly.  


"What?  Go to bed!" Jezula demanded.  "We'll do it on our own!"  She came right in, grabbed Bibles and hymnals off our bookshelf and headed for the porch.  


"Lily!" Gertha asked.  "Wanna watch Dora?"


I fell asleep to the sweet sound of friends singing praise on the porch and Lily responding happily to all of Dora's questions, the first time I remembered today how Great and Beautiful He is.  


My seven friends met without me (hip-hip-hooray for having a Bible study that is not dependent on me!), and Noel came and sat on the bed with me before leaving, putting her cool long hand on my head and praying for me.    


Micheline and Gertha fed Lily lunch and stayed an extra two hours until Matt came home to help with Sofia.


My head in a painful, stuffy fog, I didn't learn much today.  But I did realize that I have friends...real ones.  


And I realized that by being so helpful, helpful, helpful all the time and refusing to be helped or ask for help might just be keeping friends from getting to love me the way I am always getting to love them.


I wish it hadn't taken 5 days of feeling terrible to realize it.  I commit to allow love once I get better...and until then, too.


Let someone love you today!

sick chicks

I don't know if it was Aunt Patty or Aunt Lori who sent the packets of chicken noodle soup, but it was our best friend last night at 2 am.  


I have been incredibly sick since Saturday, and Sofia and Lily have now come down with cough, stuffiness, aches and fever as well.  We're trying all the medications Dodo and Bubba have, as well as all the bizarre remedies our second culture is offering...and just feel like awfulness.  


Please pray for rest and recovery (and for Matt to stay strong!)

Poverty, Getting to the Heart of the Matter

by Rick Wood, Mission Frontiers

We’ve all seen them, awful pictures of little children with emaciated bodies, video scenes of long lines of desperate parents seeking help for the children they love at some overrun clinic in some desolate, fly-infested area of Africa or Asia. Or perhaps you have seen stories about the people living off of the garbage piles in Manila or Tijuana. It breaks our hearts. We all wish that something could be done to “fix” this problem and stop the suffering. We feel helpless against such overwhelming need. Is there anything that can be done? Does the Church of Jesus Christ really have the solution to this problem?

There are many believers who feel that caring for the poor is one of their highest priorities as an expression of their faith. Others say that church planting and discipleship must take priority. Perhaps God has called us to do both in ways that reinforce each other. But how do we go about helping to raise people out of poverty? We see one generation after another grow up and die in poverty with very little change. Is it even possible to make a difference?

Money Is Not the Answer.
Aid Is Not Enough

There are many voices inside and outside the Church that say, “We just need to be more generous.” But is this really the long-term answer? If everyone in the “developed world” were to give the poor 10 percent of their income, would this solve the problem? Would trillions of dollars collected in the West and shipped off to Africa make any long-term difference in overcoming poverty? It hasn’t so far.

As Peter Greer of Hope International reports in A Hand Up Not a Handout, it is estimated that over three trillion dollars has been donated to Africa since 1970. In the process the economic growth rates of many African countries have plummeted. If generosity was all that was needed, should not the three trillion dollars have been enough to at least make a dent in the poverty problem in Africa? Yet things have actually gotten worse. Should we continue to send money in the vain hope of someday making a difference or do we need to rethink our approach?

Empower the Poor to Find the Answer

Regardless of how good our intentions are, without the essential foundation of biblical character all efforts to overcome poverty will fail-no matter how much money is sent. When it comes to poverty, a lack of money is not the cause of the problem, and tons of cash is not the solution. There is nothing wrong with helping people through a desperate situation, and we should do all we can when lives are in imminent danger, but we must focus our efforts on what helps people get out of poverty--not keep them continually dependent on outsiders for their survival.

The strategies employed to help the poor must encourage and support the individual and community efforts of the poor to change their own situation. No amount of outside aid and outside solutions can replace local initiative. No amount of hard work by outsiders can replace the ongoing hard work of the local people in creating jobs and staring their own businesses. The local people have to be empowered to take responsibility for their own lives and be given the spiritual tools, business skills and freedom that can enable them to lift themselves out of poverty. Is there a role for outside help? Yes, but it has to be centered around changing lives from the inside out, not simply putting expensive band-aids on the situation that will eventually wear off. The healing and transformation must come from inside. We can help in this process, but we cannot and should not do it for them.

The Church Has What the Poor Need Most

Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, the authors of the marvelous book, When Helping Hurts, explain in What Is the Problem? that poverty ultimately derives from the Fall of man and the four broken relationships that have resulted. These are with God, with others, with ourselves and with creation as a whole. These broken relationships have affected all of us, but for the poor they have become a crushing burden that Satan has used to convince the poor to believe a lie and keep them in poverty.

Scott Todd explains in Poverty Is a Lie that the poor have internalized the lies, “Give up! You don’t matter. Nobody cares about you. Look around you: Things are terrible. Always have been, always will be.” These are the lies of fatalism, victimhood and powerlessness. They have lost the hope that they or anyone else can change their situation. They have come to believe that no amount of hard work can change their circumstances. These lies must be defeated in order for the poor to get out of poverty, and they can only be defeated by presenting them with the truth of God’s love and power through Jesus Christ--just what the Church is best able to provide.

As we establish Church Planting Movements within every people, we will encounter the poor and the lies that have kept them in bondage. As they come to Christ and begin to believe the Truth, they will have the power to defeat these lies and to lay the spiritual foundation from which they can raise themselves out of poverty.

In order to overcome poverty and stay out of poverty, all of us, including the poor, must be committed to doing what is right in the eyes of God--living by biblical principles. When we do, we build up what Ken Eldred calls Spiritual Capital, which is essential for any economy to flourish. (See Spiritual Capital by Ken Eldred.)

Biblical principles such as honesty, integrity, trustworthiness etc. are essential for an economy to work. The foundation of successful economies is the trust that is built through honest interaction between people. If you destroy trust between people in a society through dishonest transactions and corruption, the economy will decline. The poorest countries on Earth are often riddled with corruption and violence at every level of a society, from the government on down. The biblical character traits that make a prosperous society possible come from lives transformed by Jesus through an effective discipleship process.

Ken Eldred gives the following example: “If one sells something with true weights and measures, then he has completed an honest transaction and has added spiritual capital to his and the nation’s account. However, if one fails to fulfill his commitment to replace any defective products he sells, then he has proven untrustworthy and dishonest and has withdrawn spiritual capital from his and the nation’s account.”

This has profound implications on the development, success, and culture of an economy... . (including our own). There’s a relationship between economic prosperity and the pervasiveness of biblical values in the culture. Douglass North won a Nobel Prize in economics for demonstrating which “institutions” in a society characterize successful economies. He proved that the trust factor, when pervasive in a society, is one of the “institutions” that lead to a better economy.

Without a moral structure based on biblical principles, short-term self-interest becomes the prime motivation, and people will lie, cheat and steal to get what they want instead of doing the hard honest work that builds the trust and spiritual capital that makes successful economic interaction possible. Transformed lives are the foundation upon which any society can build an economy and overcome poverty.

But economic growth does not come automatically when people commit their lives to Jesus. People need training in ordinary basics like personal money management, how to run a business and good work habits. This should be part of our discipleship too as we plant churches. Church planting should lead to economic growth among the poor. If it doesn’t, then something is wrong.

With a combination of effective discipleship and practical, locally-based economic solutions the poor can come to believe that they can do all things through Christ, including raising themselves and others out of poverty. They can then create their own wealth and not be dependent on outsiders for their survival.

the birds

The sun was sinking quickly behind us as Lily and I headed out the gate and down the road for Noel's.  Her family was expecting us, but due to hundreds of people gathering in the street for Mardi Gras, we'd been forced to wait...I hadn't wanted Lily and I to become part of the parade.  I left Sofie at home, knowing I'd have to carry Lily most of the way...Noel's isn't close.

I guess I had assumed Roselore lived on our road, but while I see her a few days a week andedan (inside) and every Sunday in church, I'd never seen her house.  As we were hustling past cactus fences and around mucky puddles, I caught a glimpse of Roselore's face out of the corner of my eye.


"Roselore!" I called, cutting off the road and climbing up the little hill to chat for a moment, pulling Lily along with me.  "How are you?"


She was in a tank top and shorts, bent over a small cooking fire, black with history, piled next to a tiny stick home.  Eyes red from the smoke, she grinned uneasily, seeming ashamed for me to see her in shorts and at her home.  

note: these are not Roselor's children, but some other friends from Saccanville.  I have no pictures of Roselore's kids.

Her four children were right around her, waiting for dinner, dirty, wearing torn clothing, light haired and all stick figures of the children they should be.  It was hard to stop staring at them.  They appeared that they should be unable to stand, and one of the twins still had remnant tears running down her face.

"What's wrong, chickie?" I asked her, trying to ignore the surroundings and make them all comfortable.  


The only thing I've ever heard Roselore say about the twins was that she doesn't know why God did that to her.  I always cringed to hear her say that, thinking of their two precious lives.  

But when I saw them at home, both at five years-old still remarkably smaller than Lily, I understood.  Their skin was sunk into their ribcages, their eyes appearing abnormally large in contrast with their shrunken faces, their hair, the color of dust from malnutrition.  


I see a lot of very poor children in Haiti, a lot of ringworm, a lot of rat nibbled toes, a lot of runny noses, a lot of skin and bones.

But Roselore's children are starving.  


It's not as if she has not told me so.  


Almost weekly, she asks for 50 gourdes ($1.25 USD) to buy food for her children.  I always give it to her, but mostly figuring that she just knows I'll say yes if she mentions kids and food.  


After chatting for a few more moments, we headed back down the road to Noel's.  But my mind was buzzing, and has been ever since.

How do I know Roselore, you ask?  She works at the Seminary. She cleans empty missionary homes.


There are three homes at the seminary, two of which have been empty between 9-10 months of the year. Once a week, Roselore comes in and cleans those.  (What is she DIDN'T have this job...like many others?)


I have been irritated at Roselore, because she keeps leaving the back doors open so that she can come back later and collect the bowls of rare and precious ice she has in the freezers.


Let me say that another way:  I have been mad that Roselore has been taking water.  Talk about humbling.


Week after week, she leaves her stick (and I mean sticks, split in half, woven into each other and hooked on four wood posts) house and her starving kids, and mops and dusts again huge, tiled, cream, clean houses that have been empty since she cleaned them last week.  


That five minutes in her dirt yard changed my perspective on everything.  Lily, hopping off the couch with her bag of fruit snacks to get the key from Roselore when she's done.  Roselore scrubbing toilets that have water in them...water that no one labored from the pump.  Roselore, cleaning houses that are infinitely nicer, safer and cleaner than her own, and leaving them empty to go home to her shack in the dirt, wondering what to feed the four mouths she is alone responsible for.  

My mind flies back to eight weeks ago.  The empty house next door had a tiny little bird stuck in it.  Just a pretty itty bitty thing, Uncle Don had been unable to get the bird out.  When Roselore brought me the key, she had a bag of ice in one hand and to my surprise she had that little bird tucked in her other hand, its eyes wild with fear.


"Oh, look!" I said, kind of confused.  "You caught the little bird!  He's a pretty little thing."


I wanted to ask her what she was doing with it.  Didn't know how.


"I'm taking it for my kids" she said, and I thought, "that's weird. Like, to play with, or...?"


Nope.  She took that tiny little bird home to feed her children.  

Her four are four of 100 in Saccanville.  Saccanville is one of 5000 in Haiti.  Haiti is one of 10,000 in the world.  


Our Father, who promises He sees every bird that falls, is intimately aware and involved in ALL of this?

NO thanks.  I can barely stand the brokenness intermingled with my daily life.  

photo catch up!

The students are in the hallway, waiting for classes to begin, arguing for and against the "once saved, always saved" theology.  I'm heading into an hour of English "current events", in which we'll be talking about the recent violence in Afghanistan.  At 9:30, we join other OMS Haiti missionaries in a full day of meetings.  Tomorrow morning, Director Bryan arrives.  Lily has been strictly informed that she MUST wear clothing today.


Life!


Here's some photos from the last few days of ministry and life:

 laundry day

The church Matt spoke at last weekend.

Leandre, Matt and Lorma (Lorma is the pastor here and 4th year student)

 Matt teaching at a Mardi Gras youth conference at Belony' church.

Must be More : The Season of Darkness

Yesterday we watched as the annual passing of the sacrifice occurred.  


Hundreds of people gathered in the street in front of EBS, many banging drums, most dancing wildly, many dressed in bright colors and masks, many reeking of clairen, many carrying huge baskets of food on their heads, and several men in the middle carrying a life-sized doll of a white man who looked a lot like Santa Clause.


He had money pinned all over his jacket and pants...some small and some Haiti-Huge....we even saw some 100 dollar bills, coming from "Lot Bo", everyone said (literally "the other side", meaning "The United States").  


The grim Santa and his merry adorers were heading down the road to his "death", a "sacrifice" that takes place annually.  He, all of his money and all of his baskets of food (in a community of starving people) were burned last night at midnight.


It is said that those who gave him money will be given good luck this year...the amount of luck based on the amount of the bill.  He is a very professional demon, and doesn't work for free.  His blessings come at a price, a price, as it seemed yesterday, many were happy to pay.


This has been happening now for decades.  


No one really wanted to talk much about the whys and whats...it was a day to be carefree and carnal, not to consider.  The church speakers from the two Saccanville churches blared in competition with the drums and chanting throughout the afternoon, youth and little ones hoarded inside so as to not be affected by what one emaciated and adorable 4 year-old told me was "the stuff of Satan."


I don't know.  We've lived here a long time now, and Voodoo is still something very deeply rooted that leaves us with more questions than answers.


This is what I know.  There is no place God is not.  


Today we remember that we are but dust, and to dust we will return.  This was not hard for me to consider for myself.  Whispering the reminder over my sleeping, soft-cheeked gift from God was choking.  


Dust.  But dust worth dying for.  There is no place God is not.


We are now in a season to consider our sin.  To consider ourselves without all the puffing and primping and positive thinking.  


It's dark.  But there is no place God is not.


We are approaching a day of celebration, but it is just as importantly preceded by days of blackest night.  He died.  Was dead.  I killed him.  Laid dead in a dark cave.  But there is no place God is not.


Jesus wasn't invited to the parade yesterday, nor was anyone interested in even the thought of Him.  


But He was there.  There is no place that God is not.


I have awoken to mornings of the deepest pain, suffered in dark lonely corners, hidden in silent despair of the heart...I have chosen my way, I have forgotten to invite Him (or chosen not to) and I have chosen myself over my God.  


But there is no place God is not.


Praise the Lord, this Lent, this season of darkness.  He is still there.  I praise Him.




Giving up food has always turned into a diet or weight loss competition in my mind...it's always been about my own strength.  So we'll keep our rice and beans this year (though I'm giving up ice cream!...wait a minute...)


We talked as a couple and wanted to give Him an extra space of time each day to invest in His Word.  We already don't have tv, don't have movie theaters, don't have shopping malls, don't have fast-food etc.  But at least 5 evenings a week, once we finally get the girls down and can't think about work any more, we pop in a release and enjoy being transported for an hour or so to some other world where there is no laundry, no papers to grade, and no one is starving and burning food for Satan.


Probably 7-10 hours a week. So for the next 46 days (40 days, not counting Sundays), we won't be watching movies at our house, and in that space we have intentionally created, we will be filling it with His Word and talking over coffee with Him.


As much as we enjoy temporarily forgetting the heartbreaks of life, pending decisions and stresses of ministry and work and home with movies, I am genuinely excited about a chance for God to actually SPEAK to those worries and burdens...something an inanimate DVD is unable to do.


I'm also working through a Bible reading/Lent activity plan with Lily...you can check it out here!  This went really well today and I am excited about this opportunity to hide His Word in our hearts together and to begin focusing more deliberately on what He did for us. 




Whatever you decide to do, or not do, this Lent, help me remember that it's not about what I have done, can do, want to do, or try to do, not about my dusty self or my wretched ways.  It's His love that wants the space with ME, His love that calls me to repent, His love that called Him to the cross, and His love that gives me new life beside Him.


It's a dark season.  But there is no place that God is not.


Good Lent!

Must be More : The Journey of Lent

The forty days of Lent (meaning "lengthen") are meant to be a reminder of the 40 days of rain during Noah's flood, in which God cleansed the world; the 40 years of desert wandering, in which God purified Israel; the 40 days of Jesus' fasting in the desert in preparation for his ministry.

There are several traditional ways that these are remembered: fasting, repentance and giving...though I think God probably welcomes ANY way that we deliberately focus on His work in our lives.

FAST

The point of Lenten fasting to me always seemed to be one of depravity and denial... trying to make ourselves suffer so that we could somehow better relate to His suffering on the Cross, or an attempt to show Him how much we love Him based on how much we were willing to give up.  

However, I'm realizing that pointless Lenten fasting might occur when we are completely absorbed with ourselves and what we are doing for God.  

Our sacrifice is not going to somehow earn His favor or make us more acceptable to God.  It can't!  We can't make ourselves LESS of sinners, any more than we can pardon ourselves for our own sin.

Lent is, after all, a prelude Christ's death--the ultimate expression of God's grace!

So here's what I'm realizing this year:  The point of Lent isn't what I give up...or even if I give up anything!  The point is that I'm intentionally creating space in my life for my relationship with God.

I love what KC Ireton has to say about fasting:  

"Fasting, when done with proper motives, is an amazingly fruitful way to create space, for it creates in us an emptiness--where there used to be something, now there is a blank, a hole, a space.

"Throughout history, fasting has been the practice of abstaining from food.  However, the definition of fasting has now expanded to include abstaining from any number of things--shopping, media, novels, driving, the news, etc.  

"Since the purpose of a Lenten fast is to create space in our lives for God, it makes sense that, in our consumption-driven and media-saturated culture, we would fast from things other than food.

"We need the space and time to be able to listen to God, as our lives are often too full for us to hear what He might be trying to say.  

"Once we have that space, we can cultivate it through another traditional Lenten discipline: the prayerful reading and study of Scripture.  There is a lovely symbiosis here: by filling the time or space that our fasting has created with Scripture, we open ourselves to having our hunger and thirst for the Word of God reawakened...create a space in which another hunger--for God's Word--can be satisfied."

REPENT

Just like fasting, and Lent in general, repentance might carry a negative connotation, too.  Perhaps images of self-loathing or self-punishment come to mind, especially as we think of how much our sins pain Him.  

However, more often than a temptation to self-loathe there seems to be today a temptation to write off our sins as "personality quirks" or even as "just how I am" or "just the way God made me."  We try hard, and are doing our best...so we tend to have a lot of grace for our sins.  

I don't want to have grace for that which separates me from my Holy God!

I'm looking forward, instead, to this Lent Season being a time that I can ask Him to help me re-evaluate my heart and my life, and to show me my sins, my shortcomings, for what they are.  

I have failed...miserably.  Failed to love my husband and girls like I should.  Failed to judge not!  Failed to pray when I said I would.  Failed to spend time with Him like I had promised.  Failed to love others as I should, failed to give of myself freely, failed to prioritize with His perspective.    

But it's not just important that we come to echo Paul's grief: "oh, wretched man that I am!  Who will save me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24) but that we can PRAISE God for showing it to us so that we can repent from it!  He loves us enough to have more for us!  He desires our repentance so that we can be free from bondage.

I don't want these sins to be any part of me!  I don't want to carry them or be identified by them.  I want the full freedom that He has promised for a life in Him.  

When we repent, we acknowledge that we are in bondage to sin, and God, in his mercy and grace, frees us to live as the people we were meant to be.  Praise the LORD.  I want that this Lent!!

GIVE

Embracing that we are but dust, and that we are deeply sinners as well, is not to make us depressed, but is simply to remind us who we are---just humans, utterly dependent upon the mercy and loving-kindness of God. 

Knowing this, we can give others the same mercy God has given us, sharing with those who are in need.  

We can give of our money, of our time or of our gifts, sharing what we have, helping in a situation we may know there is pain or need.  We could volunteer once a week or give donations or support a cause...however we feel led.  

I love the idea of somehow pairing the fast with the giving...such as fasting from buying shoes and using the money you would have spent to buy new shoes for a family in need, or fasting from going to the movies and using that money to send a young couple to the movies...saving the money you would have spent on food and giving it to your local food pantry, etc.  

Maybe after thinking through all this, you will decide to disregard Lent and focus instead on upcoming Easter week, and of course, that's ok!  

But as I have been studying and researching and meditating on this opportunity to create space in my life for Him to remind me who I am (dust...but dust worth dying for), to be free of sins that I've become comfortable with or maybe aren't even aware of, to show others the same mercy He has marvelously shown me, and to fill the dark season of Lent with the Light of His Word and presence, I am GRATEFUL.  

I have missed it for 29 years.  This year, unburdened by superstitious rites, self-deprivation and uncertainty, I will spend Lent reckoning with the reality of darkness and death, the reality of my sin and His mercy...best-of-all, with HOPE.

How?  Tomorrow...

 

Must be More : Ash Wednesday

The first day of the season of Lent, Ash Wednesday (coming from the ancient practice of placing ashes on worshipper's heads as a sign of humility) holds a vital reminder that I have previously written off as, well...depressing.  


This is it:  You, me, from the kings of the world to our chubby cheeked children... all are dust, and to dust we will return.


In the early years of the church, Lent was only a forty-hour fast, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, fasting the time that Jesus was in the grave.  Eventually, it become a forty day stretch (not counting Sundays which are feast days).  It no longer was just an expression of sorrow over Christ's death, but instead an expression of sorrow over what CAUSED His death: my sin.

In the early church, ashes were only used to mark the foreheads of those who had made a public confession of sin and sought to be restored into the fellowship of the church.  But, over the years others began to desire to show their humility and identification as a sinner by being marked, as well.  

Why is it so important to dwell on being dust?  On being sinners?


Because the whole season of Lent is compressed in these: The painful reminder of our mortality, the sadness that comes from the reality of having to let go of all we hold dear, and the agonizing proclamation of Jesus' death on our behalf, thus the hope of resurrection. 


Here's what Kimberlee Conway Ireton believes (The Circle of Seasons), and I believe she is right:  "The hope of resurrection is not yet realized.  Lent has now begun, and I need--we all need--to live in this space, the dark place between the ashes and the bread and cup, between the declaration of our mortality and the declaration of Christ's redeeming work on our behalf.


"That is what Lent is--a time to reckon with the reality of darkness and death.  We do so with hope, because this season of darkness ends in Easter, in resurrection, in new life.  But we can be raised to a new life only if we have first died to the old one.  THAT is the challenge--and the gift--of Lent."


Ash Wednesday not only prefigures the mourning at the death of Jesus, but also places us in a position to realize the consequences of sin.  It is a somber day of reflection on what needs to change in our lives if we have fully died to ourselves, and are to be fully alive in Him.  


It is fitting that Lent begins with a soot cross marked on our foreheads because from it's earliest, Lent has been a season of dying, of giving up, of clearing out, of emptying...


Not emptying for the sake of emptiness, but so God can fill us with Himself.


Tomorrow...the journey of Lent, and then, what Lent is shaping up to be around here.