Paying Attention to Our Needs in this Season

I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. - Leviticus 26:4

We’ve heard Brenna invite us into taking a different posture of the 40 days of Lent: to think of Lent as a time of pregnancy. Let’s keep digging into this metaphor as we explore what this Lenten season means for us. 

When I was pregnant with my son, Beckham, I experienced very different things in each trimester. In the first trimester, my body was exhausted and sick as it was adjusting to the new life that was formed. In the fragility of the beginning of my baby’s life, my body needed rest. Is the new life you are creating fragile? Do you need extra rest and care at this time? In the second trimester, my body settled into new rhythms no longer needing the same type of rest. Rather, as I felt the kicks and movement of my baby I also noticed my body needed more activity and movement. Do you feel more settled into creating this new life? Do you need to get up and move alongside this creation? In the third trimester, at the same time my body was ready to be done with carrying the baby, I also felt so strong and connected to my pregnant body. My body needed to nest and prepare for what was to come. Do you feel like you are outgrowing something and need to prepare for what’s next? How are you savoring today as well as preparing to give birth to a new life? 

Alright, for some of you I might be a little too into the weeds of the pregnancy metaphor. For those that are still with me, isn’t it wild how much happens in pregnancy? The creation of something asks a lot of the body and soul. It unfolds in different stages and beckons different responses. Our body and communities have to adjust to the new rhythms. And in it we experience so many different emotions. 

In this season of Lent, where is the Spirit moving you? What is being created within you? How do you need to tend to yourself--your spirit, your body, your community, and the life being created? 

Take some time to pause. What is one word or phrase from this devotion that you want to meditate on? Take a couple of deep breaths. See the word, feel it in your body, and ask the Spirit to move you into action. 

- Dottie Oleson