Ash Wednesday is less than a week away.

And I'm sitting here in the middle of building something - a formation house for the domestic church, properties and platforms and content and outreach - and the Church is about to remind me: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

The timing feels intentional. Not convenient, but intentional.

There's a version of this season that could feel like contradiction. Ambition and ashes. Dreams and dust. How do you build something with your whole heart while simultaneously acknowledging that you and everything you build will return to the earth?

But I don't think it's contradiction. I think it's the only honest way to build.

Because here's the truth: the ambition is real, but so is the risk. I'm building in my margins, betting on something I believe God is calling me to. And I don't know if it will work.

I need courage to keep building.

I need conviction that this is the right path.

And I need the humility to remember that none of it is ultimately mine. That I'm dust. That the Sacred Heart holds all of it - the vision and the vulnerability, the dreams and the very real possibility of failure.

Lent is the season that holds both. The striving and the surrender. The building and the dying.

So what am I doing this Lent?

Two things. Both feel right for this season.

First: Adding the nightly Examen back in - diligently.

I've done the Examen before, in seasons. But I've let it slip. This Lent, I'm committing to it every night. Reviewing the day. Where did I see God? Where did I resist Him? Where did I act out of fear instead of faith? Where did grace show up in the building?

My mornings start with Holy Hour - listening before working. The Examen is the bookend. It closes the day by reviewing what God did with what I offered.

Building something new generates a lot of noise - metrics, decisions, anxieties, small wins and setbacks. The Examen is how I process all of that with God instead of just carrying it to bed.

(I'm looking forward to getting back in the habit of using my friend Mark's Examination Journal each night.

Second: Re-reading Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales.

Francis de Sales has become one of my key patron saints. I chose him recently - or he chose me - because of his gentle persistence as a writer and evangelizer. He wrote Introduction to the Devout Life for laypeople trying to live holy lives in the middle of ordinary work. Not in monasteries. In the world.

That's exactly what I'm trying to do. Build something holy in the middle of spreadsheets and email outreach and code and content calendars.

There's something fitting about letting my patron saint form me while I'm trying to form others. About receiving before giving. About remembering that I'm still a student, even as I step more and more into writing and teaching.

I received a name once, during my Order of the Arrow Vigil when I was young: Lilchpin Lekhiket. Diligent Writer.

That word - diligent - keeps showing up. It's in my vocation. It's in my patron saint's intercession. And now it's in my Lenten commitment: adding the Examen back in diligently. Not when I feel like it. Every night.

Diligence is what turns dreams into something real. And Lent is the season for diligence - for showing up, for doing the work, for letting God shape us through small daily acts of faithfulness.

Here's what I'm learning: building from dust is what God does.

He formed Adam from the dust of the ground. He raises up and brings low. He takes what is small and makes it fruitful - mustard seeds, loaves and fishes, a lowly young woman, and a carpenter's son from Nazareth.

So maybe the ashes aren't a contradiction to the dream. Maybe they're the foundation.

Remember you are dust. And build anyway.

Not because you're confident in yourself. But because you're confident in the One who breathes life into dust, who makes dry bones live, who calls things that are not as though they were.

That's the courage I need. That's the conviction I'm asking for.

And that's the Lent I'm entering - with ashes on my forehead and a formation house in my hands, trusting that both belong to the same God.

If this resonated with you, I'd be honored if you shared it with someone who might need to hear it.