I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.—Ezekiel 36:26 (NAB)
“Hi, Mom. What’s up?” I said, answering my cell phone with an exasperated sigh.
“Hi, honey. We haven’t talked in a while, and I just wanted to hear your voice! You sound distracted. Did I catch you in the middle of something?”
“Mom, I’m always in the middle of something,” I snapped.
Something in me opened, and I noticed the meanness of my tone. “Mom, I’m sorry,” I blurted.
Lent was about to begin, and I had been thinking about a spiritual discipline to take on. I found it in that phone call.
“Tell you what, Mom,” I said. “For Lent, I’m going to call you every day. It can just be for five minutes. But I’m going to call you. Every day.”
READ MORE: What to Do for Lent: 15 Meaningful Suggestions
And I did. I called Mom in the evening as I drove home after work. We talked, as such daily contact leads you to do, about what she and Dad had for dinner, how loud my husband snored the night before, the funny snippet of conversation she heard in the grocery store. I appreciated her insights and her wit. I relaxed into our talks and shared more deeply.
A few weeks into this practice, my husband and I visited my parents. My dad pulled me aside. “Those calls to your mother,” he said, “keep them up. She really enjoys them. They make her day!”
I smiled. They had already started to make mine too.
God, help me to see where I’m acting from a heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.
Digging Deeper: Proverbs 11:25; Galatians 5:22–23
Excerpted from Walking in Grace.
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