ashes

It is incredibly something to go full steam ahead in Haiti for a week, to wake up to the birds and the cars and the flooding the night brought in and to wake up the next day in a hotel....to wake up the next day back at home. Hot shower. Smooth roads. Closed house. Clean water.

It's almost as if it never happened...and also almost as if the entire world was gone around since last we were home. 

It's a mix of lots of things, rushing back to school for Lily, Matt busy mid-week and a sweaty, stinky pile of laundry Emma-high.

Mostly, it's that nothing stops or slows down...just shifts, and your brain and heart are left with lots to process. 

We got home at 3, I started a load, got a much needed shower, dressed up, stuck a frozen pizza in the oven for wiped kids and headed to the Ash Wednesday service at church to meet Matt. 

I slipped in late and sat in the dim and Matt talked about what it all means, and I needed that. 

He asked if we knew about the ashes, and tears started to pour unknowingly down my cheeks. 

I know about ashes. All the ash heaps in my Bible have "Haiti" scrawled beside them, every image from these days in my mind are of the ash heap. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needs from the ash heap, and makes them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, praise the Lord.

He talked about Lent and about suffering and slowing and lengthening, on purpose. He talked about the journey to the cross, and said that suffering leads to deepening and lengthening.

Stretching.

Sitting with the beautiful suffering these days leads to such stretching, such deepening, such lengthening within myself. 

Eating meals with a suffering people lengthens you. Asking for and listening to suffering stories, it changes you. It should. Looking when it's easier to look away...it deepens perspective. 

Spending days with Jonas and Gertha and Anne-Yolie and Leme deepen you. Walking in the ash heap and asking God if He sees, if He's reaching down....seeing Him at work and yet sitting with the suffering, it stretches you.

As Matt smudged the ashes on my overwhelmed forehead, I felt the grit and it helped me. 

I am desperate for Him, smudged for my heart. 

I have seen so many different sides of Him this past week. I want it to deepen me. Lengthen me. Sober me. Re-orient me. I want to be poor in spirit...humble of heart...undistracted...

Among the poor in spirit our hunger for Him is fueled....in suffering we are deepened. 

There is something lasting and rare in the beauty that comes from ashes. He reminds me.

That which seems like good excuses won't the day we meet Him.