Lent is a call to weep for what we could have been and are not. Lent is the grace to grieve for what we should have done and did not. Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not. Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now.

When I’m asked when I’m going to sing for church again, I say, “Either when our children are older or my husband finds a new job.” I tell myself that it’s just not the season in my life for singing. But as the years (did I say years? am I old enough to say years?) slip by, I am beginning to second-guess myself. That maybe all the hard work and blood and sweat I put into overcoming my terrible case of stage fright might just fizzle and disappear. And so I’ll be a 40 year old soprano who can’t be taken out in public. Which would really be too bad.

--Me, October 14, 2009. I’m 28 years old and the mother of a five-month-old, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old. I am also, it would seem, a fortune teller.

What could I have been.

What could I have been if I had been a different kind of mother, one for whom mothering and singing could have lived in symmetry. 

What have I lost by the choices I’ve made—the big choices to quit jobs and leave opportunities, and the little choices that accumulate over days and across years until we get to here and I’m a forty (one) year old soprano who can’t be taken out in public.

Which really is too bad.

Last week, I found this recording of myself. It’s 2001, I’m 20, and it’s my Senior Vocal Recital. I am, for a few—too few—months, the most myself I have ever been. 

This, I think, is worth weeping for. I am worth weeping for.

Maria Wiegenlied