Home > Lenten Blog 2024

Thread of the Divine

March 7, 2024

Jeremiah 7:23-28  |  Luke 11:14-23  |  Psalm 95:6-11

It is 4:47PM on the night that my blog is due. Recently, I had a conversation with Father Tim and was inspired to be a part of the Lenten blog series this year. Then I read the scripture for my week.

I’m going to be honest; I was not feeling as inspired anymore.

As someone who struggles with my faith, often, the idea of wrath in response to disbelief makes me concerned that perhaps I am not loved by God, and I question my place in a faith community. For a while, I was debating if there was even anything I could write. I was going to give up.

Then I started thinking of how my life has unfolded since the first time I came to St Luke’s.

As some of you know, when Zachary and Zoey were just a few months old, we came to St Luke’s for the first time. Walking into the church that day, I was exhausted. Not just my body.

My soul was exhausted.

At that point, I sometimes wondered if I even had a soul. It often felt like I was just an empty vessel. Every task, every interaction, every moment of my life felt as though I was playing a character. I told my body what to do, what to say, what facial expressions to make, but it was all disconnected from me.

I felt like an over inflated balloon that was going to pop at any moment.

It was an untenable situation. Ultimately, I was drawn to St Luke’s. While I wish I could say that I was miraculously filled with the love of the Divine and this is where my blog ends, we all know that no one’s journey is quite so simple.

What I did find was community. I found wonderful people who loved my children. In finding community, I began to find myself again. Zachary, Zoey, and I began to attend church every week. I listened to and found comfort in every sermon. I attended adult faith formation, signed up for readings, and became involved in Loaves and Fishes. We had found a home. I had begun to heal.

Enter March 2020.

When you are constantly exposed to the cold, eventually you get used to it; twenty degrees in the middle of January is sweater weather. Once you are used to warmth, though, the cold feels so much worse. My spirit (as with many others) was freezing in 2020. By October of 2021, I was convinced I would never be warm again. The only thing that kept me going was Zachary and Zoey.

In a moment of what I now truly feel was divine intervention- I reached out for help. Once again, I began to heal. In a matter of a couple of years, my babies have grown into children, I’ve become a caregiver to two wonderful women, and have fallen in love.

I still missed St Luke’s, but I didn’t know how to return. I had left so abruptly, I felt so much shame. After all the struggle I had been through, I was unsure of my own faith. I didn’t want to disrespect the church and the community, by showing up uncertain in my belief. Then one day, Zoey started talking about Jesus. She began asking me when we were going to go to church again.

I knew that if Zoey was going to begin this journey, it needed to be at St Luke’s. We returned at the end of December. It was as if we had never left. We were met with hugs, warmth, and kindness, and not even an ounce of questioning or accusation. Zoey even asked if she was celebrity because everyone knew her name.

Less than a month later my dad passed away.

I’m still figuring out exactly how my faith takes form. What I do know is that I am continually drawn to St Luke’s. I’m brought back to a place of faith. I can see the ways in which the thread of the divine is woven into the binding of my story.

Honestly, I was unsure of what all of this was leading up to, just that I felt compelled to share.

However, through writing this I have realized: I was so concerned about the wrath. I was focused on “Whoever is not with me is against me”. I had forgotten about the constant invitation. The unrelenting patience. The boundless forgiveness. Our journeys are their own. While are all imperfect people with imperfect faith, we are still perfectly loved.

Thank you for the parts you have played in my journey so far, and I look forward to continuing it with you all.

Niki Ziroli