Out of the Depths: My First Lent
Three years ago at this time, I was at one of the lowest points in my life. Everything that I thought was important was being stripped away. If real suffering is akin to pneumonia, mine was more of a sniffle, but at the time, it was real, and I was hurting. Fear over finances. Physical pain. Despair. Nothing was interesting. Everything tasted bland. C.S. Lewis in the Great Divorce mentions the main character standing in a bus queue that is going nowhere and noticing that his surroundings were stuck in that moment after sunset when all the colors are flat and dim but not dark enough for the light coming from the inside of houses to look cozy and inviting. Everything is neutral and nothing is appealing. That's how I felt. I was going nowhere and the whole damn world was gray. At one point, in one of those raw moments of honesty, I gave God an ultimatum: "Either you show me what you want me to do, or you'll lose me. I'm hanging on by a thread here. I need someth...