The ache is not going away.

Lent Day 1

Ash Wednesday has never been subtle.

It begins with dirt. Ash smeared across foreheads. Words that refuse optimism: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. No pivot. No lesson tied up with a bow. Just an embodied reminder that fragility is our baseline.

I think that’s why Ash Wednesday still works, even now. Especially now.

Because the ache is not going away.

Not the ache of grief that fades and flares when you least expect it—at the grocery store, in the line at the pharmacy. Not the ache of bodies that don’t cooperate, that wake us up at 3:00 a.m. with pain or panic (often both). Not the ache of loneliness, or regret, or unfinished stories, or prayers that keep circling back unanswered. Not the low-grade ache that hums beneath our productivity and self-improvement projects, reminding us that something is still missing, no matter how organized the calendar looks.

Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey Among Oak Trees, 1810, oil on canvas.

We keep waiting for a version of ourselves—or a version of the world—where that ache resolves. Where it finally quiets down. Where we get to say, Ah. This is it. I’ve arrived.

But Lent interrupts that wonderful fantasy.

Lent is the forty day season that begins on Ash Wednesday and leads us, slowly and deliberately, toward Easter. It mirrors Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness and has been practiced by the church since at least the fourth century. Ash Wednesday marks the start of that journey, when the church tells the truth about our limits out loud—using ash because words alone won’t do.

Lent doesn’t promise relief. It doesn’t offer a five-step plan for transcendence. It simply invites honesty. Forty days to stop pretending that we are fine, that we are in control, that we can outrun our limits with enough discipline or optimism.

This year, I’m inviting you to spend the next forty days with me here on Substack. Together, we’ll practice living with the ache of being human. I’ll be posting daily reflections right here (be sure you’re subscribed!).

As a historian, I can’t help noticing how strange our current impatience with longing really is. Reading across centuries of Christian tradition, you’ll notice how little energy it spends promising inner resolution. Desire shows up not simply as a flaw but as a sign of life. Augustine called it restlessness. Aquinas called it desire for God. Longing wasn’t something to outgrow. It was not expected to disappear, only to be rightly oriented.

But as a human being with far too many subscription services, I keep wishing this were not true. I keep hoping that the ache is a phase I’ll outgrow, a problem I’ll eventually solve, a season that will pass if I’m patient or faithful or disciplined enough. I want to believe that one day I’ll wake up feeling complete—less restless, less tender, less aware of all that is missing. Instead, the ache changes shape. It attaches itself to new worries, new loves, new fears. And Lent, inconveniently, keeps reminding me that this isn’t a personal failure. It’s a human one. Or rather, a human truth.

I am not unfinished because I’ve done something wrong. I am unfinished because I am alive.

A few years ago, I had the chance to speak with Father Ron Rolheiser, a Catholic priest, theologian, and longtime spiritual director, best known for his writing on desire, discipleship, and the spiritual life. He has one of those minds that can quote Aristotle as easily as he can recall what he had for breakfast.

At the time, I was restless about all that felt chronic in my life—chronic pain, chronic fear, chronic humanness. Someone suggested I talk to Father Ron. So I did what I always do when I want someone to become my friend: I invited him onto the Everything Happens podcast. What I expected to be a thoughtful conversation turned out to be a pivotal one.

I said to him, “You argue something that feels both true and deeply inconvenient—that we’re born with this ache, a longing that never fully goes away. So maybe we could start there. What is this ache?”

He didn’t hesitate.

“I think it’s the most basic thing inside of us,” he said. “If you remember Descartes’ famous line, I think, therefore I am—well, St. Augustine goes deeper. The deepest thing is I desire, therefore I am. We wake up aching. Babies wake up crying. And we never quite stop for the rest of our lives. There’s always something missing.”

Then he paused and added what felt, to me, like the heart of it all: “Augustine says, You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. To me, that’s the deepest truth of my life. And I think it’s the deepest truth in everybody’s lives—whether it’s recognized or not.”

I told Father Ron how that longing often makes me feel like I should be doing faith better—more grateful, more content, less…achey.

He didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t pathologize me or suggest I had failed some spiritual maturity test. He simply told the truth: desire is not a problem to solve but the most basic fact of being human.

The ache is not a glitch in my system. It is THE SYSTEM.

Which brings us to the season of Lent. Lent is not designed to fix us. It’s a season that tells the truth about what it means to be human—finite, dependent, unfinished. It’s a season that refuses the cultural lie that everything is solvable if we just try harder, think better thoughts, or curate our lives more carefully. (If January taught us anything, it’s that those illusions are fragile.)

This is the time of year when the church sides with loss. When God walks the downslope. When Jesus moves toward hunger, rejection, and death instead of away from them. And somehow, we are invited to follow. You are welcome here.

In a world allergic to limits, Lent is a recalibration. It doesn’t ask us to be cheerful. It asks us to be honest. About our exhaustion. About our fear. About the disappointments we carry quietly. About the ache we keep trying to outgrow, numb, or spiritualize away.

This, my dears, is not a failure of faith. It’s where it begins.

Because the ache is not what’s wrong with us. It is how we’re made: hungry.

And learning to live with the ache—without pretending it will disappear—is part of the long, stubborn path to joy.

So together, we will inch our way to Easter. Slowly. Honestly. Without skipping the hard parts.

Joy, if it comes, will not arrive as the absence of ache. It will come alongside it. A defiant yes whispered in a world that gives us plenty of reasons to say nothankyou.

But first—dirt will be rubbed on our foreheads.

We tell the truth. We are tired. We are longing. We are not finished.

So welcome to Lent, my dears. The ache is not going away.

But neither, somehow, is grace.

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Tell me: Where do you notice the ache showing up most persistently in your life right now—and what would it mean to stop treating it like a problem to solve?

P.S. If Lent is new to you, WELCOME. Churches all over the world will be offering an Ash Wednesday service (sometimes they even have drive-by ashes!). For any Lent-curious, I would recommend finding a service near you and attending. It is quite moving to have ashes smudged on your forehead and be reminded of your finitude. It’s a wonderful place to start.

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This week’s reflections:

For ease, refer back to this post for this week’s Lent reflections. The links will go live each morning:

• Thursday, February 19 - Lent Day 2: Naming the Ache

• Friday, February 20 - Lent Day 3: Mobilized Love

• Saturday, February 21 - Lent Day 4: The Downslope of God

• Sundays during Lent are mini-feast days. No Lent Reflection.

• Monday, February 23 - Lent Day 5: Be A Roger

• Tuesday, February 24 - Lent Day 6: Without Reasons