Feel the Warmth on Your Skin, No One Else Can Feel It For You
Mar 23, 2026 | By Cline Piotrowski UT Austin ‘27
It’s the end of March! This year already, I have been blessed to travel to many places, from Dallas, Texas to Rapid City, South Dakota, and it has been astounding. I’ve experienced new people, new national parks, and new memories. However, the key change I have noticed these past three months, though, does not have anything to do with new locations. Rather, it has been the expected seasonal and locational change in the weather. Yep, the weather.
The bleak winter months are my peak “lock-in” times. However, this is also when I find I am at my emotional lowest. Being in the middle of the Lent season, we are also in the thick of the spring semester. We are charting our summer plans and conquering our exams. This, personally, has me feeling frustrated with my job lineup, sad that the end of college is looming closer, and mad at myself for not being more productive, more healthy, more academic. However, with the gradual shift from overcast skies to the blooming sun, I have been reminded by the Lord, once again, that I am only human.
Lent is a season of high-intensity for many, but it is simultaneously a strike against our world’s obsession with speed. It should remind us that Jesus’ own life was structured by rhythm, waiting on the Father, and retreating to rest (“And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” Mark 1:35). So, I accept that Lent should remind us that Jesus did not live a lifestyle of hurry, and neither should we. When I am able to slow down and feel the sun’s warmth on my skin, I am able to adequately and fully feel these emotions. After all, they are real, even if they seem a little off.
Last year, I learned a mental grounding technique of feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin. Sounds simple enough, right? What does your skin feel like right now? Slow down. Do a scan: What does each part of your body feel like right now? Doing this assessment has allowed me to breathe, focus on where I am right now, breathe, evaluate my thoughts for what they are, breathe, recognize each emotion, and finally, breathe.
So if we can correctly and fully feel our emotions for what they are, that only leaves the question: What do we do with them? It is no secret that feelings are fickle things. They change on the hour, the setting, and if you are like me, the weather. I believe that emotions have two main sources:
Spiritual Indicators: Feelings can be symptoms or a red flag from the Spirit that something in your spiritual disciplines/walk of faith is off. We need restoration and continued sanctification by our Creator.
Human Limitations: You are a human, living in a broken, changing world. You are fragile, finite, and made from dust (being sustained by the Giver of Life).
I propose to you now a solution that seems obvious, but took me time to wrestle with and fully understand: What if we gave both of those emotional sources to the Lord?
I initially just accepted that my feelings may be from God (#1), and to God they should be taken. But God, my Father, does not just want me to respond to Him when He talks to me first. He deeply desires for me to bring him my human brokenness (#2), as well. He wants me to take to Him my happiness when I am spending a sunny day with friends, and He wants me to bring to Him my sadness and anger when I am feeling stuck in my life.
After all, God says He will use us for what we have, even if it’s messy: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them,” (Ephesians 2:10). I firmly believe that walking in His work means giving not just our functional disciplines, or Lent fasting, or talents to God, but our feelings and emotions too. God does not want to just work in that which we think He wants to use; he wants to work through all of us, no matter if it seems of no use. I encourage you to give to Him your full self. Not just the physical, mental, or spiritual, but the emotional too. Let Lent be a reminder to surrender yourself to your caring Father every day through glorification. Let the sun shine in, on, and through every part of you.