Lent 2026 · Day 7: Dust, Despair, and Beginning Again

I’ve been thinking about how imperfect I am.

Not in an abstract, existential way. In a real way. The kind where you replay conversations. The kind where you know you could have been kinder. Braver. More honest. The kind where you recognize that sometimes you really suck at life.

After my mother died, I fell into a trough of despair that lasted for years.

On paper, I was doing everything right. I had spent my entire professional career working in nonprofits. I was the person people called when they didn’t know where to go. I knew the resources. The systems. The people. I was a bridge between communities and the agencies meant to help them.

I was useful.

And I hated it.

I hated what my life had become. I hated that my worth had quietly fused itself to what I could produce, offer, fix, or carry for others. Nonprofit culture has this unspoken expectation that love for the work should compensate for poverty wages. That sacrifice is proof of commitment. That burnout is a badge of honor.

But I still had rent to pay. I still needed to eat. I still had a life to live.

Working for a nonprofit did not mean I took a vow of poverty.

And the longer I stayed, the more I realized something I didn’t want to admit. Sometimes we weren’t fixing the system, we were helping it continue. Filling gaps that should never have existed. Softening the consequences of political neglect and poor policy choices, so the people responsible never have to feel it.

We were asking exhausted communities to save themselves.

I was exhausted too. I was so, so very tired.

I had built an identity around being the strong one. The capable one. The helper. And somewhere along the way, I disappeared inside that role.

So I left.

I walked away from the life I had spent over a decade building and ran south with nothing but the quiet hope that I might still find myself.

That’s where I began to understand something Psalm 103 says plainly: “He remembers that we are dust.”

Dust is not failure.

Dust is origin.

Dust is what we are made of. Fragile. Temporary. Human.

We are constantly trying to make the best decisions we can with incomplete information. Most of our wisdom comes from misfortune. Either our own or someone else’s. Pain becomes the teacher we never asked for.

We are fallible because we are human. Not the other way around.

People love giving advice. Entire industries exist to tell you how to live your life. But the truth is simpler and harder at the same time. You are the only person who wakes up with yourself every morning and falls asleep with yourself every night.

You are the one who has to live with your choices.

Good choices. Bad choices. Indifferent choices.

You carry them in your body.

And yet, every morning, you are given another chance to decide again. To live another day. Good. Bad. Or indifferent.

That’s the miracle.

Not perfection.

Continuation.

Lenten Reflection:

"...for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust."

Psalm 103:14 reminds us that God does not treat us as our failures deserve. That compassion, not punishment, is the foundation. That we are not loved because we are useful. We are loved because we exist. Our value is in our humanness.

I had spent years believing my usefulness was my worth.

I was wrong.

You don’t need to be flawless to be worthy of love. You don’t need to have everything figured out to be moving in the right direction. You just need to keep choosing with as much honesty as you can.

With love.

With patience.

With kindness.

With grace.

With humor.

Especially toward yourself.

Because shame does not transform people.

Compassion does.

And most of us are doing the best we can with the version of ourselves we have today.

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.

#fypシ #LentReflections #healingjourney #nonprofitunicorn