Day 1 - Timothy

I woke up today knowing exactly what God wants for me for the next 40 days and excited to begin! I texted with a friend last night who also expressed his excitement and enthusiasm about the season of Lent and something about that realization that others were also entering this season of growth and reflection impacted me. What a powerful time this is in the world! What if EVERYONE participated in Lent? It would be like Christmas prolonged! Think of the outcome it might have! What changed might ensue?!

But as it is, there are thousands upon thousand, probably millions of people that ARE participating in Lent! Not only are all of these people significantly aware of their need for a Savior, but all are willing to reflect on that need and offer up something in return for the provision of that Savior in Jesus Christ.

I don't know! I was just so excited from the moment my eyes popped open. I looked up Ash Wednesday services in Newport at the Catholic Church there and found out they had an evening one that started at 7pm. So for the day Heather and I went to Lincoln City for some much missed time at the beach and some lunch and I thought about my Lenten offering and kept on the look out for a way to complete my first day.

Heather and I stopped at a little pizzeria that I've had my eye on every time we go through town. Pizza is my favorite food and I have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to try out this cute little place I had never tried. The woman smiled big at us from behind the counter and we struck up a conversation about all kinds of things. Mostly we just laughed and talked about our origins and shared little local tips we had discovered in our time here. It was fun! When we left I told her she was a blessing and said God bless and she stopped in her tracks and grinned really big and said, "well, thank you!"

And I was so excited to have finished day one of Lent! I had shared my light and joy with somebody... but God checked me. Not done! Not bad, but not deep enough. This offering for lent is about breaking through the padded walls of comfort I have built around me and sharing not only my smile and joy, but my DEEP.

My offering actually came in the most unexpected of ways. It came over text with a young friend of mine from California named Timothy. And it wasn't just that I touched his life with some profound words of comfort or an answer that the Holy Spirit interjected at an opportune time of need in his life... it was that he touched my life too. We talked about Lent, and about why it made a difference to me and why I was doing it.

I found myself DEEPLY encountering his questions. Was it just something I was doing out of obligation? Why was it important to give God the next forty days in the way I am? Was it an acceptable offering to a Savior that died on the cross for my sins... can we ever really offer anything? What is an offering? Shouldn't we give of ourselves to God daily? What can I give that I shouldn't give daily? These were hard questions to answer. Uncomfortable sometimes. Were there right answers?

Eventually my thoughts led me to this question: why wasn't every day a day of reflection and offering? I think, in my dream of who I could be if I were the very best version of myself, it would be. And everyday, at least in my life the last couple of years, is a day of reflection and offering! But my offerings are selective. My reflections are sometimes only encountered when my best side is facing the mirror and I am sucking in really hard.

I give God my heart and my struggles and my successes and my hopes and dreams and failures everyday... these are things I hand to Him to get by on the daily... But when it is my time or my pleasures at stake I put God a little further off. I don't want to do what He is asking just yet, it is taking from my time to grieve or escape or do what I want to do! And fear is a common dictator of whether I am obedient to His call to do something or talk to somebody too.

So this is a step forward, toward something more. This is a commitment to growth and an attempt to overcome life long fears and comforts and self indulgences, somehow justified by myself until now. It is an agreement to trust utterly and reflect on my life and myself with complete honesty... and to go DEEP everyday even if it stirs up waves in my life or makes me feel things that hurt or realize things that are hard or less than desirable. So, hopefully, at the end of forty days, I will discover what is missing from the other 325 days of my year!

So what started an inquiry of each others days turned into a DEEP journey into my own heart... I felt it! It was deep! And then, day one was complete.

And my last reflection of the night was this... after that conversation with Tim... after I went deep with God and with someone that He had put in my pathway that I wasn't accustomed to going deep with in such a way, it opened me up to do the same with everyone I encountered after. When the Ash Wednesday service had ended Heather and I met a handful of wonderful people that we had really cool and deep conversations with. It was such a delightfully unexpected repercussion of feeling God so deeply!