The First Weekend of Lent, I Shut Up

The Life-Sized Aposotles

On the first weekend of Lent, I went on a four-day silent Catholic retreat. Of course, I had a luggage set of expectations. (Rotten Type A!)

I was sure I’d get answers for some challenges I’ve been facing. Epiphanies. Maybe even divine marching orders.

Peter (Life-Sized Apostles)

Instead? Radio silence. On every issue. Silence! From God. From myself. From everyone.

And yet, something shifted.

No lightning bolts. Just stillness. Surrender. I never knew what surrender felt like until that weekend. Honestly, I didn’t think I could surrender anything. (Type A, again!)

Go figure.

Since returning home, I kept the practices I’d learned on retreat—additional daily prayers, more time in silence, simplicity—not perfectly, but faithfully.

One of many statues of Mother Mary in the Totus Tuus Garden

And then it happened. Within a couple of weeks, those unmet expectations I had brought to the retreat—the ones I’d gripped with white-knuckled prayer—suddenly began to unfold. Sweet clarity rested in my lap.

JUST. LIKE. THAT.

It felt almost like a joke. Like God had waited for me to let go before handing me the answers I sought.

A wink. A nod. A holy smirk.

I won’t drag you through the details. They matter to me, but that is not the point. The point is that I thought I knew WHAT I needed and WHEN I needed it. (I even had a color-coded checklist!)

God had other plans, and apparently, He prefers mine with plenty of edits. PLENTY!

I’m fiercely flawed, but I trip over grace daily. I honestly think He loves that I keep running toward Him—clumsily and messily.

And I’m convinced He laughs at me. Often. Lovingly.

Here’s to surrender. To silence. And to the kind of God who gives us what we need precisely when we stop trying to make Him do it our way.

Part of "The Way of the Cross Garden"