Repent, Reconciliation, Reasses

Lent is an opportunity to repent, reconcile, and reassess our lives. It’s a process we can use to get ourselves back on track. So each year, I take some time to pause and look at what I want to change about my life. I ask myself, what is working well and what is not? I look at the way I spend my time and compare it to what I say my priorities are. I look at my baptismal promises and my ordination promises and figure out where I am. All this happens in the context of prayer.

Except I’m having trouble praying. I was on a beautiful routine that had me reading scripture and knitting while praying every morning. Then my husband retired and he wanted to have coffee with me in the morning. This is a routine now that I love as well. We wake up, have coffee, watch a little news then off we go to start the day. By this time, the dog needs to go out, I have a meeting to attend, a grandchild to care for, or a myriad of other things that need my attention. So I stopped my prayer routine.

In my book, Contemplative Knitting, I write about how to get back on track but none of my own strategies were working for me. Then I remembered, I needed to compress the time. Even reading one verse of scripture was better than not reading it all. Praying intentionally for sixty seconds was better than not praying at all.

I set Lent as the time when I would engage my prayer life again. Yesterday, I woke up and prayed for the first time in a while. I know that I need prayer today more than ever. I need to discern where God is calling me, what is it that I can do to help heal our broken world in my part of the vineyard.