Joy and Grief: Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is an especially poignant moment in the liturgical year for me. Six years ago on Shrove Tuesday, I came out. It was the beginning of a long few months of inviting people into my truth. It was a mixture of terror and jubilation, but it all began with a conversation that day when I finally accepted who I was. The following day, after a beautiful Ash Wednesday service at Glendale Baptist Church (my first Ash Wednesday service), our pastor's family was in a car wreck where their youngest child was killed. That Lenten season was difficult. Our church family grieved. In many ways, those of us who knew and love Emmie still grieve. And every year when I receive my ashes, I feel those two emotions profoundly: joy and grief. I feel them to my very core as though I am still 21 years old. While both have faded as I've grown and healed and changed, that moment of the imposition of ashes brings them back. The rawness of those juxtaposed emotions engulfs me. I