When I came into my faith in my mid-twenties, I struggled to understand the importance of Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season. 

As a child and teenager, I experienced some trauma that I didn’t know how to emotionally overcome. So I looked for emotional and mental relief through partying and other unhealthy ways. Of course that didn’t help me much, it led me further into a feeling of darkness of soul and some despair. I found myself desperately craving peace of heart and mind. When I was 27 years old, Jesus revealed his presence to me, and I experienced such a radical conversion of hope, acceptance and love that my family and friends felt like they hardly recognize me anymore.

To all of a sudden know the new life, divine light, and unceasing peace in Christ, I had a hard time embracing the Lenten invitation to remember my mortality and to mourn my sin and the sin of all of humanity. Why would I want to turn my eyes from the joy and hope I had come to know and be healed with through Christ to look back at the bitter brokenness and limitations I only knew too well in my own humanity? What if I got stuck in the feelings and thoughts of hopelessness and I lost that peace I had finally come to know?

Through the years and decades, though, I have found a true comfort and hope in the Lenten season. Psalm 103 has become guiding words and spiritual inspiration for me during this season. “As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:13-14). God knows my frailty. God knows my sin…past, present and future. God knows my limitations. And amazingly, God loves me just as I am. God loves me in my brokenness and God loves me right through my restoration.

When I now receive the ashen mark of the cross on my forehead, I find comfort in remembering that God receives me just as I am. And because there is nothing greater or more meaningful to me in this life than God, God doesn’t leave me just as He found me. God continually restores my soul so I can now bless the Lord with my soul.

As you begin your spiritual journey through the Lenten season, may you find strength and courage in the reality that the “steadfast love of God is from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps. 103:17). When you bear your ashen cross, may it not wear you down with the thought and feeling that you are not good enough for God. Instead, may the weightlessness of the ashes remind you that God takes you and loves you just as you are. May this Lenten season be an invitation for your soul to bless the Lord and to not forget all his benefits (Ps. 103:2-3). Look for the transforming works God has done and is doing within you as you continue to die to yourself so to live in Christ. Bless the Lord with your soul and all that is within you.