Are you having a Lenty Lent? It may feel like your failing or things are going wrong, but maybe you are right where the Lord wants you. Its just a bit of pain from the composting process of our souls.
Lent is not a gloomy interruption of life. It is the Church handing us winter on purpose.
In the garden, winter strips everything down. The bright flowers are gone. The branches look skeletal. You walk outside and think, Nothing is happening here.
But beneath the surface, roots are deepening. The soil is being replenished. Worms are turning what fell and died into nourishment. What looks like stillness is actually preparation.
Lent does the same.
It takes away the noise. It asks us to fast. To sit in silence. To feel our hunger instead of numbing it. To look honestly at what needs pruning in our lives. And at first it feels like a loss. Like grey skies feel to me today. Like not being able to see more than a few feet in front of you.
But Lent is not about deprivation for its own sake. It is about increasing capacity. Uniting ourselves to Christ in his passion. Praying in the garden of Gethsemane. Facing Calvery.
When you prune a plant, you cut away what once looked fruitful. You remove even good branches so that better fruit can grow. That is uncomfortable. It feels like diminishment. But the gardener is thinking ahead to spring.
And the compost pile is not a symbol of failure. It is where the old life breaks down so it can become nourishment for new life. In the spiritual life, our disappointments, our faliures, our surrendered dreams, even our grief, none of it is wasted. Given to God, it becomes rich soil.
Lent is when we allow that decomposition to happen.
We stop clinging. We let attachments die. We allow deeper parts of the heart to awaken. The grey days reveal what the bright days sometimes hide. They show us how much we depend on consolation instead of God Himself.
And then Easter comes.
Not as a surprise, but as fulfillment. The buds that appear are not random. They are the result of hidden work. The joy feels fuller because we remember the winter. The Alleluia sounds louder because we walked through the silence.
Spring does not erase Lent. It proves it was necessary.
I'm trying to die to myself and give God my fiat. This Lent I'm also saying "I am the handmade of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word". I'm surrendering myself to the hands of the Gardener.
And I pray for patience while the compost of my soul continues decomposing, I remind myself that growth cannot be rushed. His ways are not my ways. But I trust and surrender.
The Gardener knows when to prune.
He knows when to wait.
He knows when to bring the sun.
And even when you can only see three feet in front of you, the roots are going deeper than you realize.