But You know that already. You’ve known me since before I was a speck on my parents’ radar. We chat everyday and have since I was a little girl, but with each passing year, I think I talk with you more and more. I don’t always hear your voice as clearly as I’d like, but I’m alert and listening more than ever.

Today is the first day of Lent, and I am seeking to return to you with my whole heart. We both know I can be rotten to the core, but I think that’s pretty much true for everyone who seeks you, loves you, and serves you. You hear me nearly every morning say,” Help me be You to everyone with whom I interact,” then BAM!… I fall short again by being judgmental or turning my head to a friend’s suffering or saying something I really don’t mean and may come to regret or or beating myself up because of mistakes I made.

So on this first day of my forty-day walk, I ask you to look upon your child here with Your usual daily and HUGE dose of mercy, forgive me for the wrongs I do and nudge me to step out of my often self-imposed comfort zone and show mercy and love to all. As You spoke through the prophet Joel, telling your people to return to You with their whole hearts, beckon me to return, to REALLY return, through my fasting and mourning and weeping. Pull me to You during these forty days as You and I pry open my heart and do the work that needs to be done. It’s a process, a journey, and I am committed.

Thank You for loving me. I’m going to change my life these next seven weeks. I may take two steps forward and one or two steps backward, but I will keep trying to move in the right direction.

Have mercy on me.

Love,
Your child Amy