Well, friends, here we are at the changing of the seasons once again. In Nova Scotia, piles of snow double my height in a nearby parking lot have shrunk to less than half my height. Until a couple of days ago, ice still rippled and curved around branches in a puddle in the woods, while the brave crocuses survived last week’s snow burial and are in full bloom. Trees are still bare, but I’m walking briskly now on rough pavement and last fall’s fallen leaves rather than inching cautiously across patches of ice.

I’m settling into life back in the neighborhood where I grew up. There is much goodness here, and also, of course, some of the ongoing letting-go-and-settling-in challenges that any change brings.

In the midst of all this, I continue to find myself mostly without words. I’ve begun at least two blog posts in recent weeks and been unable to finish either. Hence this one, the one I finally have words for. May Jesus meet you here.

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Lent is almost over as we approach the cross this Friday, followed by a celebration of the resurrection two days later. Perhaps more than any other Lent, this has been one of letting go, and of both the discomfort and the freedom that that brings.

I’ve been praying with the team on Hallow, “Lord, empty me, fill me, use me.” He has been taking seriously my prayer, “Lord, empty me,” including continuing to empty me of my words. I trust him to answer the rest of the prayer too.

I’ve also returned to John Wesley’s covenant prayer that I have often prayed at key times in my life. These few lines in particular have been alive for me,

“I am no longer my own but yours.

Put me to what you will. . .

Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,

Exalted for you or brought low for you. . .”

There has been relief in placing it all in his wise and kind hands.

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Last week, I was praying with the first bit of John 12, the meal at Mary and Martha’s which takes place the night before Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of “Hosanna!” In the past, when I’ve prayed with this passage, I’ve experienced Mary’s pouring perfume on Jesus’ feet as an image of writing, a vulnerable pouring out of myself in love for Jesus. I’ve sensed Jesus say to those parts of me that sometimes wondered if it was worth the time and vulnerability, “Leave her alone,” reassuring me that he received my pouring out of myself as a gift, and that the fragrance of my offering was sweet.

This time, as I prayed with John 12, I wondered if Jesus was asking me to pour out my writing in a different way. Not, this time, through the hours and vulnerability of sharing words, but the different vulnerability of letting words go and being willing, for now, to be small and silent and hidden. To love in behind-the-scenes ways. To let God do in me things that can only be done in darkness, much as the new life of babies and bulbs grow best in the hidden places of the womb and the winter earth.

An hour or two after I sensed that nudge in John 12 and was asking Jesus about it, Mother Teresa’s words turned up in my morning devotional: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”

While living alone, writing has been, for me, a way of loving God and others. An intimate act of loving others with God. It is an offering I’ve gladly made, and one I hope I can still make sometimes. But for now, God more often seems to be asking me to love him and love others with him through quiet presence and simple acts of service. That, too, is a deep honor.

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Thanks for honoring the reality of this season with me, friends. Thanks for receiving what I offer when I can offer it, weighing it prayerfully, and letting it in if it feels helpful, or letting it go if it doesn’t feel like it’s what you need at the moment.

Thanks for trusting with me that the God who himself created worlds with a word and then became small, curled wordless for a while in a virgin’s womb, is always and forever at work, whether or not we have ears to hear or words to declare the mysteries of his mercy.

I look forward to being here as often as I can, while also honoring the other ways I’m being invited to love in this season. I’m not saying goodbye, which feels far too final. Instead, I’m borrowing the French au revoir, which literally translates to “until seeing again,” whether that be a few weeks or a few months from now. And I’ll borrow the Dari farewell too, Khoda hafez, “May God be your Guardian,” or “May God protect you.”

As we approach Good Friday and Easter Sunday, may we remember that Jesus, too, went through seasons of joyful hosting and frequent healings as well as those of wrestling in the wilderness, crying out in the garden and remaining silent in Caiaphas’ presence. Sometimes he preached lengthy sermons and other times he left crowds behind and knelt alone with his Father. He began his life in silence in the womb, and ended his life in silence in a tomb. Except it turned out that it wasn’t the end. The tomb became a womb from which we, together with Christ, could be raised into new life, and his silence was broken as he approached Mary in the garden and spoke her name.

Until next time, may each of us hear Christ, himself risen from a deeper season of wordlessness than any of us have yet known, speak our name. Only the One who has died for us and returned to life, bringing us with him, can speak our name with the love and hope that we need.