Taking a Breath...Lessons in Lent...

                           It is not easy, this road I am on...
                     Yet I would never choose easy. 
                 I would choose knowing and loving
                          and serving my Lord!
                                             -Linda Seppa Salisbury, March 2016


When all is said and done, and I let God's love wash over me, I am filled with a deep sense of love and care and gratitude and compassion and joy. This season of Lent is full of surprises and unexpected twists and turns. It is truly stretching me in new ways I never could have imagined.

Honestly, along with the joy and learnings, I find myself  tired to the bone, a kind of weary that has me in tears. A kind of weary that has me turning to Him, the God I know and love and serve.

I am on my knees with the knowings, some so hard and raw. Others gentle and new, forming as I go.

Every morning, on my way to school, I am listening to the latest Casting Crowns songs, a birthday gift from a dear friend. The first two songs, played over and over. It's as if God himself is speaking to me in those words...

"You're a good, good Father
That's who you are, that's who you are
And I am loved by you,
That's who I am, that's who I am."

And the tears just flow when I really let in what a good, good Father He has been to me. I am stunned by His love and His faithfulness. My gratitude is overflowing.

Especially this week.

This week I feel like He is literally holding me up and Bert up after one of the hardest weeks since Bert's stroke in October. 

When you have a major health crisis that almost takes your life, it leaves in its wake lots to process. There's a change, one that's sometimes hard to grasp.

The old passes away and the new can be a big change, a big, big change. 

Before... life was like this. Now... life is like that.
Not better, not worse just very, very different.
Sometimes the "easy" passes away and there's a new depth to life that is truthfully much harder to navigate gracefully.

Sometimes surrendering to that "new life," that's "different,"takes your breath away. It's scary.

At least it was this week.

My dearly beloved, my Bert, my best friend was struggling with some of the "after-stroke" changes and truth be told, so was I.

Yet through that struggle we clung to each other and to Him. It felt like we were "living Lent" and the lessons Lent has to offer about surrendering more to our Heavenly Father.

For He is a good, good Father, that's who is...
And I am loved by Him, that's who I am.

And while Tuesday ripped us to the core, Wednesday we were holding on to each other and to His hand.

It isn't easy, but I didn't sign on for easy.
I signed on for loving God with all of my heart and mind and soul and strength.

And I signed on, with all my love, to love my sweet Bert with all that I am. Through the easy times and hard times, no matter what.

Even though it doesn't seem possible, I love Bert even more. 

We are surrendering together to our "new normal"
knowing that we will get through this together, hand-in hand.

Lent's lessons abound and we are so grateful for each one.

Our biggest lesson? Our biggest reminder this Lenten season?

God is here, in the midst of it all, holding us up, holding us close. Loving us with the deepest love we will ever know. He will never leave us or forsake us, but will walk through the hard with us. He is here.

No matter what, no matter how hard it gets, He is here!

And we are so grateful to God that Bert is still here
and that we still have each other. My dearly beloved and I. We do not, not for one moment, take that for granted.

God Bless,
Love, Linda