Three years.

Three years since my congregation (and many like it) has held in-person services during Holy Week.

I remember Lent of 2020. I remember people saying things like it was the Lentiest Lent they had ever Lented. And then, it just kept Lenting, kept moving through a season of deprivation and confusion and struggle. Winter came around again, and I never felt properly Eastered or summered or called again into life. We just slogged through.

Last spring, I half-joked that I had given up work for Lent: after several months of illness, I was on a medical leave of absence from my job, and my time off overlapped with Lent. I spent the weeks resting and seeking healing and clarity, and this, too, was a deep observation of Lent.

Easter was still an online celebration that year. Earlier this week I watched a video made by my congregation for last year’s Easter Sunday. Households and members had filmed themselves dancing to one of our Easter songs, and these separate videos were compiled into one, complete music video. It was done well, but watching it left me feeling profoundly sad. We were all so disconnected then – and had been for such a long time. I myself had felt unready to return to my job and the overwhelming stress that was making me ill. When Easter arrived that year, the celebration was muted.

The pandemic isn’t gone, of course, but this year is different. My community is highly vaccinated and knows how to mitigate risk. We’ve been gathering to worship in person for months. We marked Ash Wednesday and each Lenten Sunday together in the meeting house. We practiced our Good Friday music and Easter songs this week, singing them together for the first time in three long years.

My own life is as changed as our corporate one. I’ve started a new job working with local, organic food, and I’ve been writing (joyfully) all the time. My wellness has increased. My stress is manageable. Last year feels as faint as last night’s bizarre dreams.

And Lent – it hasn’t felt very Lenty to me at all.

I’ve felt more Advent-y, honestly. Waiting and wondering and living with anticipation.

I was feeling down about this as Holy Week began, disappointed that my inner life had not lined up with the church calendar, that I had not been able to engage the practice of Lent as deeply as I would have liked. Easter was hurtling close impossibly fast. I thought of the game of hide-and-seek I’d played recently with a three-year-old friend: ready or not, here I come! Holy Week had arrived, and I didn’t feel the least bit ready.

But then I remembered Lent in 2020, Lent in 2021, the long fasting from normalcy that stretched between those Lents, the wrestling with global and personal crisis that had wrung me out. I’d been Lenting, I realized, for a very long time.

We do not observe Lent and celebrate Easter in order to feel particular things at particular times. After all, we celebrated Easter the past two years in the midst of grief and challenge; those feelings didn’t stop it from being Easter. My Advent-like feelings of anticipation haven’t stopped the past six weeks from being Lent. These cycles of observance are not in place to manipulate or dictate our experiences but rather to affirm them, to demonstrate how God and God’s story of love is present in every kind of season. We practice Lent, practice Easter, practice Advent, moving through these parts of the story again and again until they become second nature. We wander Lenten wilderness – God is there. We wait in the pregnant dark of Advent – God is there. We wonder at the cacophonous mystery of Pentecost, soak in the quiet gratitude of Epiphany, mark the days of Ordinary Time – God is there. As we cycle through the story again and again, we learn to trust that birth attends preparation, revelation grows from seeking, and resurrection is not far from loss, because this is who God has promised to be. God’s generative presence does not rely on a careful liturgical performance or a specific alignment of our emotions. Easter comes – ready or not – because the God of life cannot be contained.

Maybe this has been yet another overwhelming Lent for you. There are plenty of reasons for it to be, plenty of suffering and despair, plenty of desert journeys and weapons of empire and sealed-up tombs. Or maybe Lent barely registered, a blip on the map of your year, and Easter seems impossible to contemplate. Whether Lent feels never-ending or far away, Holy Week comes. And we move through the rhythms of fierce and liberating love offered to us in every place, every time, every season we inhabit. Jesus says, “Here I come,” and we are found.