Ashes to Ashes

This past weekend one of our teachers at the school where I work passed away from complications of liver cancer. He was in his fifties. An age that used to seem so old to me that now feels so young and so near. He was the most genuine man you could ever have met and the phrase “had a song in his heart” ran so true with him.

His death has been a harsh reminder of mortality and the inability to escape or negotiate with it.

This past Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. Another harsh reality check if you ask me.

Ash Wednesday doesn’t play nice, does it? The songs we sing are about death or morbid. There’s no cute outfits or sparkly trees. No fun candles to light or presents to open.

It’s just a cross and some dirty ashes.

A literal reminder with the ashes that “from dust you come, and to dust you will return.”

Return

Come back

And there lies the hope. The hope in a return that is free from sex trafficking, pay toll road scams, homelessness, grief, cancer, tariffs, and laundry.

A return that we will make one day to the ground from which we came.

But also a hope in the return of Jesus. And when he returns it all gets made whole again… somehow, someway.

And so I had the ashes placed on my forehead. The same forehead that my husband kisses, and sometimes my little boy when the world is right.

The same forehead I place oil on each morning in the sign of a cross to remind me who has marked and sealed me as his own.

And I was reminded that there is a need to return while I am on this earth. To Jesus. To his teachings. To a love for others and myself.

And that feels worth the reminder.