Ash Wednesday holds great significance for me.  I came Home.   I had been distant from God for four years, yet in His tender mercy He kept wooing me.  I got pretty good at ignoring Him but He was diligent in pursuing me.  After the running was over and my life in shambles I connected with Him for the first real time on Ash Wednesday 1979.   I was a sinner in need of a Saviour; I was a broken woman in need of a healer.  I found both during that unforgettable return to church.   

My marriage of four years was over and although my part in the failure is acknowledged there lay within me a lot of woundedness and shame that God would take years to heal, using  many good teachers of the Word to facilitate the healing. He was faithful and gentle, yet relentless showing me when and how to truly accept the changes he was making in me. He did this by creating a hunger and thirst to know Him. Overnight I had a deep desire to listen to Christian radio and qualified ministers.  I felt like I was going crazy because all I could think about was Jesus.  Upon my conversion I was totally unaware that I had also been given an ‘extreme makeover’. When I went into work on Thursday morning one of the executives asked ‘what have you done differently with your makeup today?’ to which I replied ‘nothing’. ‘Ah’, he said, ‘but something is different’. It wasn’t until I had gained an understanding of 2 Corinthians 5:17 which says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” that indeed God’s working power was evident in my life, shining forth in my face.

My most precious memory of my 1979 Ash Wednesday is a conversation that took place between my mother and me. Let me set the background and the scene. Mom was a prayer warrior. Her passion was knowing that everyone–but most importantly–her children have a saving relationship with Christ. So you can imagine and sense her sorrow knowing her daughter had drifted from God for four years. We’d even had several unpleasant conversations regarding my prodigal status. Visualize the prodigal daughter has moved back to her parent’s home and is now sleeping in her old bedroom. The work of the Ash Wednesday service is over in the natural, but very much active in the heart and mind of a scared 24 year old woman as she retires to bed for the night. In comes her mother who isn’t sure what to do or say to a child living with a decision to divorce, yet is so happy that her child was in church for the first time in four long years. She quietly sits on the bed next to her child, not seeing a grown woman, but the face of her baby and she gently pushes aside a strand of hair and whispers ‘is it good to be home?’ I’m certain  she meant to be physically back home in the safety of the walls that had protected me for 21 years. I answer ‘yes’ but really being expressed was that I was ‘Home’….in a rightful relationship with God. Now, these 35 years later, I realize I was actually in ‘two places at one time’–it can be accomplished! …..home and Home.