I've been sitting in my favorite chair, feet braced against the ottoman, looking at Twitter and Facebook and knitting blogs for the past hour and a half. I just drank the last swallow of hot chocolate from the coffee mug. It was cold and icky sweet, thick with the dark brown syrup in the bottom of the cup made of Swiss Miss that did not quite dissolve in the hot milk an hour ago.

It's 10:29 and I never, ever go to bed before 11. I'm stressed and tired and can't seem to let go. There are remnants of today's work, or the work I hoped to complete today, scattered around my chair. My knitting is on the other side of the room. I can't even hook up with the yarn and cable needle that would help ease me into the end of the day.

Lent starts tomorrow, the forty days of repenting and remembering that life is suffering and none of us gets out alive. People tell me they love Lent, they revel in Lent. Not me. I've never liked Lent. You could go back through all 12 years of this blog and every year, somewhere in February or March, you'll find me sniping at Lent in one post or another—the hymns, the Wednesday night church services, the ashes, the purple, the gloom.

It feels like the dark cloud between me and a better world. A season of dirty snow and winter jackets stiff with four months' steady use, jackets standing up by themselves and begging to be washed and put away in the back of the closet.

And yet.

Lent says what's wrong. Lent seeks forgiveness. Lent waits patiently on the Lord.

So here we go.