On this dreary Wednesday morning, I fidget in an office chair instead of nestling in my cozy couch and type on a work PC rather than my beloved Mac and watch the rain pound the pavement outside my window.  I don’t typically blog at work since my time is not my own–constant distractions and interruptions, beeps and buzzes and cries for attention.  But is my time ever really mine, and to whom does it belong?  Today marks the beginning of Lent and something greater than what is around me calls through the gray and noise for my focus and my heart. 

A Reformed Protestant believer, I don’t come at this season with much knowledge about it under my belt.  So I’m educating myself, and I started with www.lifeingraceblog.com.  Check it out.  I plan to write more about my approach to Lent this year in a couple of days–some crying kids and their teeth, and that aforementioned knowledge, are all that stand in the way.

In the meantime, I’m praying for my eyes to be opened to the light that shines through the rain, to the sun that is always there even when my eyes can’t see it.  The patches of warmth in an otherwise broken world, places where my soul is at home and can rest on this journey that is only the beginning. 

Gratitude.  For the first patient of the day, a child adopted from Central America whose grin woke me from my self-absorption and reminded me of my own adoption, what it cost the one who paid for my life with his.  What Julian of Norwich wrote, that if everything is grace then “nothing is amiss”–not ever.