A Lenten Reflection

Lent has begun and we are now about a week into it. It began with our beautiful Ash Wednesday services last week and will culminate with Easter. This forty-day journey is a period of repentance, reflection, and prayer. St. Alban’s has so many ways to get involved from Sunday spiritual formation, Wednesday night soup suppers, Friday Stations of the Cross walks, and even a way to give back with packing meals. With my role as Youth, Children, and Families Director, this is a time where I usually give up or add something to my life, or both. It is also a time of great reflection on myself, my job, and my blessings.

I started this job over five years ago, although it feels like just yesterday. Those five years certainly have thrown a lot at myself and all of us. For me, it was cancer in addition to Covid, but through it all has been my faith and being surrounded by a wonderful St. Alban’s community. As I reflect on those years, although challenging for all of us, I see a resilient group of amazing parishioners and families. No matter what happened, we have come together to accomplish remarkable feats including navigating a pandemic, building a parish hall, and continuing to grow our church family all while mastering the art of the pivot. Sometimes we’ve even needed a Plan Z, but our faith and grace has brought us through.

From a job perspective, I started with a full Sunday School pre-Covid with three full younger classes and a youth class then a massive transition to suddenly not meeting during Covid and working from delivered packets and yours truly videos. We did our best to remain connected and we even had a Zoom Christmas Pageant. Now I can see families returning, the Sunday School classes beginning to fill up again, and we are almost back to three younger classes. As I reflect, our Sunday School has come back in large part due to the amazing volunteers and wonderful committed families. It gives me a great sense of pride to know we are almost back to where we were pre-Covid.

Reflecting on our youth group, this is one of the most transformed parts of my job. We started with only three and combined with St. Patrick’s for youth group for about a year. Followed by renovating an entire room, bringing back high school Sunday School, and building a team of supportive parents, and reinstating our own strong youth group under the amazing guidance and work with Ministry Architects. Since then, we have grown our youth group to at least 10-15 regulars and for some events as many as 25. A new youth leadership team was started to assist with planning, and they even lead an event of their choosing. It has truly become a group I am in awe of all they have accomplished.

This and every Lent season it is important to reflect and pray. You never know what you may discover that will inspire amazing moments and lifelong memories. May we all remember that we are blessed to be here by the grace of God and not to waste one moment making a difference and memories that will last a lifetime.