Today is a good day to begin again

How is Lent going for you? I hope you feel like your days are enriched with extra prayer, you’re drawing closer to God, and your actions are mirroring the holiness you were hoping to discover in this season.

If that’s where you are, wonderful! You can stop reading now.

This post is for the rest of us—those of us who are finding this Lent to be a little bit of a struggle.

I committed to reading a devotional every day, and I’ve already missed a day.

Most Lents, I fill a basket of prayer intentions, and this year I didn’t even think of it until Lent was well underway.

And the other day someone asked me what I had given up, and I felt like my answer was a bit hollow.

It’s easy to feel that you’re not doing enough—and that what you’re doing isn’t good enough. Maybe it’s not. I’m pretty sure I’m failing this time around. But I try to remember that Lent isn’t about winning. It’s about taking small steps that we hope lead to big ones. It’s about recognizing that we are weak. We are sinners. We are human. If we’re doing this right, Lent will not be easy. But we are trying.

And we are just getting started. There is a reason Lent is not just a day or a week. It’s a season. We are going to stumble on this journey. We will struggle and fail and fall. But we can pick ourselves up, keep our eyes on God, and start again.

So, here we go.

This weekend I knew I needed a reset, so I went to Confession. And, after I came out of the confessional, feeling the incredible gift of God’s grace, I saw a friend and her family slip into a pew nearby. I went to say hello, and my friend told me her son Lukas—who is 7—had said to her, “Today is a good day to go to Reconciliation.”

So, they did.

His words have been echoing in my mind. Because Lukas is right.

Today is a good day to go to Reconciliation.

Today is a good day to experience God’s mercy.

Today is a good day to remember how much God loves us.

Today is a good day to pick one good thing to do.

Today is a good day to try again.

Today we begin again—as we do every day. Today we start the next step of our Lenten journey. And how blessed we are to have today.

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