Lent 2026 Ash Wednesday

I did not grow up in church, but my family claimed to be Baptist.

My family was destroyed when my mother died at 43 years old. The glue, the light, the joy, or whatever you call the magic that holds a family together died with her.

My older sister turned to the occult to try to regain control of all the grief, anger, and sadness she couldn’t control. My older brother tried to drown his pain in sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

My father hooked up with a woman who managed to grind the broken pieces of our family further into the ground.

But God… as they say. But God showed up and literally saved my sister and my brother in a very dramatic way. And Jesus was back in our lives.

Being the youngest, I was taken with my siblings as they explored this new life as “Jesus People.” Singing and floating from church to church.

We adapted to the different places as we tried to follow the Spirit and serve Jesus the best we could.

At the end of her life, my sister found a place for her poetic mind and broken heart at the Episcopal Church. The beauty, the liturgy, and the ritual soothed her.

One Wednesday, I took my sister to the church so she could pick up a book, and as I sat in the car, I saw people exiting the church with black smudges on their foreheads. At first, I chuckled, thinking that they didn’t know they were displaying a bit of mascara, paint, or dirt on their head.

But when every single person who came out had the same smudge, I began to consider that my sister had gotten into a cult.

When my sister came out, we talked about it, and she told me what was going on.

I wondered how I would feel if I went about my day with that smudge on my head. I’d be laughed at, I mean, I laughed. I’d be embarrassed. It would be a constant reminder, all day, that I was made of dust and to dust I would return. That seemed depressing.

Older and wiser now, I can see the beauty of sharing in Christ’s suffering. Not just reading about it or talking about it, but living it even in a small way, like wearing a smudge of dirt on my forehead for a day.

It is a small act of protest against the world and its way when we voluntarily humble ourselves to get in sync with our Savior.

There is something incredibly beautiful and exciting about experiencing our faith in our living skin and not just having an academic knowledge of it.

My church doesn’t have an Ash Wednesday service, but maybe I can do it myself. I’ll let you know.

Peace.