Restore:
A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation
Valerie Delgado (Illustrator)
ISBN 9781646801480
eISBN 9781646801497
ASIN B09P9QY56Q
During Lent in 2026 I worked through a few volumes, and two of them were from this series. They were both very different but I benefited greatly from both of them. To date it appears there are 5 offerings each for Lent and Advent in the “A Guided Lent/Advent Journal for Prayer and Meditation” series. I plan on working through all of them because both this and the other volume I did this year were excellent!
The description of this volume states:
“Follow the Lord into the depths of your heart this Lent and you will never be the same.
Take a healing journey with Sr. Miriam James Heidland, SOLT, as she helps you turn away from what wounds you and toward God who heals you and makes you whole.
In this beautiful guided journal for prayer and meditation, Sr. Miriam invites you to meet the tenderness of God’s mercy, the power of his love, and the restoration of your heart and life as you practice prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Restore features stunning original art by Valerie Delgado of Pax.Valerie along with daily meditations on a passage from scripture, reflection questions, guided prayer, and space for journaling and notetaking.
Throughout Lent, you’ll move through four different phases of healing, focusing on traditional Lenten practices:
1. Prayer is the means of healing our relationship with God.
2. Fasting disciplines us in healing our relationship with ourselves.
3. Almsgiving leads us to healing our relationships with others.
4. Sacrifice shows us the path to heaven and union with God.
If you enter into Lent with Christ, your heart will see more clearly, be pierced more easily, love more strongly, and serve more passionately. Jesus will be etched into the crevasses of your being.
Restore is perfect for both individual and group use. Free companion videos and a downloadable leader’s guide are available at avemariapress.com.”
About the author we are informed:
“Sr. Miriam James Heidland, SOLT, is a popular Catholic speaker, cohost of the Abiding Together podcast, and the author of the bestselling book Loved as I Am.
A former Division I athlete who had a radical conversion and joined the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity in 1998, Heidland has shared her story on EWTN’s The Journey Home, at numerous SEEK and Steubenville conferences, and at the USCCB’s Convocation of Catholic Leaders.
In addition to speaking, Heidland has served in parish ministry and as the director of novices for her SOLT community. She also has served as an assistant to both her provincial and general superiors.
Heidland earned a master’s degree in theology from the Augustine Institute and speaks extensively on the topics of conversion, authentic love, forgiveness, and healing.”
About the illustrator:
“Valerie Delgado is a Catholic painter, a digital artist, and the owner of Pax. Beloved. She illustrated the books Prepare Your Heart by Fr. Agustino Torres, CFR; Adore by Fr. John Burns; Restore by Sr. Miriam James Heidland, SOLT; and ABC Get to Know the Saints with Me by Caroline Perkins.”
The chapters and sections in this book are:
Week of Ash Wednesday
First Week of Lent: The Desert
Second Week of Lent: Freedom of Heart
Third Week of Lent: The Roots of Sin
Fourth Week of Lent: The Healing Balm of Almsgiving
Fifth Week of Lent: The Journey of Forgiveness
Holy Week, the Week of All Weeks
A sample reflection is:
“Ash Wednesday
But you are merciful to all, for you can do all things, and you overlook men’s sins, that they may repent. . . . You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord who love the living.
Wisdom 11:23, 26
The Inner Room
Here we begin, dear friends. Ash Wednesday. Our foreheads are marked with the blackness of death while the words “Repent and believe in the gospel” or “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are spoken over us. Every single person, no matter their age or state in life, receives the same greeting, for we all are called to repent, believe, and remember. All things pass away and only the eternal remains.
We receive glimpses of this reality throughout our lives, but today we ponder it specifically as the door through which we follow Jesus out into the desert. The Catechism states that “interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed” (CCC 1431). We must turn away from what wounds us, destroys us, and makes us sick and turn toward God who heals us, saves us, and makes us whole.
While other people may know certain things about us, and we may know ourselves to varying degrees, only the Lord knows us fully. He alone sees us in our fullness and wholeness and loves us completely. This is why we must go into the “inner room” with him, into the hidden place, so all can be revealed.
He is inviting us into an encounter with him, in the depths of our hearts, for that is where true transformation takes place.
Reflect
Where are you in your heart and life right now? What is Jesus wanting to heal in you as you pray, fast, and give alms this Lent?
Take a few minutes to write about this in your journal.
Pray
Jesus, help me as i begin this journey with you. Give me an open heart, a willing spirit, and the courage to keep going, no matter what. Amen.”
I highlighted numerous passages while working through this volume. Some of them are:
“The season of Lent stirs many things in our hearts. Some people love it, some people dislike it, and all of us know that we are supposed to somehow be transformed through it all. We often give up chocolate, alcohol, or meat. We try to practice mortification and remember that we are only pilgrims on this earth and that all things pass away. And while all these things are inherently good and important, I often wonder what is being engaged at the deeper level of our hearts.”
“Perhaps by now you have noticed some areas of your life that need attention this Lent. When you look at the traditional Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, you may have chosen a few practices for each discipline that will help bring you into deeper freedom during this season.”
“As sin scatters and fragments, love brings us into communion and wholeness.”
“He is calling us into union with him in the heart. This is why we must allow the Lord to prompt our actions with his inspiration and further them with his help. We are not making the journey of Lent on our own or from our own will. We are being led by the Lord as the Holy Spirit led Jesus out into the desert.”
“This is a journey about your heart with Jesus and your relationship with him. Each person’s relationship with Christ is unique and unrepeatable. As God loves each of us in a way he loves no other person, so too we love God in a way that no one else loves God.”
“Prayer heals our relationship with God. Where we are shattered by sin and disorder, prayer draws us into the heart of God.”
“Or more succinctly, the heart of God enters into our misery. God enters into the true misery of our sin, sorrow, and suffering, and he saves us, restores us, and redeems us.”
“The beautiful thing about the desert, though, is that it lays all things bare and Christ goes before us. We do not go into the desert alone, and the Lord will not reveal anything to us that he does not also wish to attend to and heal.”
“A covenant says, “I love you. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I am not going anywhere. I am here for you. No matter what happens, I will not reject you. I love you as you are, and I desire your ultimate good. I give myself to you completely and I receive you completely. You do not have to hide anything. You do not have to pretend. You can bring anything to me and I will be with you in it, bear it with you, and speak the truth to you about it in love.” This is how God loves us. This is the freedom and responsibility of love.”
“Prayer is not mere words; prayer is life itself. This is why we pray without ceasing.”
“How might you give the Lord permission to come into any place of your life and bring you into wholeness and into relationship with himself?”
“The earth that we live upon is not neutral territory. We live on not a cruise ship but a battlefield. And we know this battle through and through, as well as the ache for communion in eternal love.”
““First, our wounds are not arbitrary, they are not random. Satan is like a sniper. He intuits with his angelic intellect the destiny of every human person and he shoots his deadly arrows into the place that will do the most damage in order to thwart the flourishing of the person and God’s plan for their life. Satan succeeds when he can convince us to hate God, hate ourselves, and hate others for the wounds we bear.”
““Suffering that is not transformed is transmitted.” Every experience of suffering we have had that has not yet been redeemed and transformed by the love of Christ is transmitted to those around us. The suffering we have experienced does not just disappear; it is most often buried alive. And that pain buried alive continues to afflict us and those around us.”
“The priest who mentored me for many years before and after I entered religious life was very fond of offering the adage that when we fast from one thing, we need to feast on something else. This is not compensating for what we are aching for but offering our heart, mind, body, and soul the true food that it needs.”
“As Adam and Eve hid in the garden, so do we. In light of our story and where we hurt and how we try to avoid suffering, our sin and broken ways of living follow a pattern.”
““Behind every disordered desire is a good and holy desire, an unmet need, an unhealed wound, and a hidden pattern of sin.””
“Maybe we feel that no one in our life listens to us or really hears our heart and takes us seriously with attentiveness and love. Maybe we don’t feel as though we have a safe place to bring our sorrows, and we have had to bury our anger our entire life. Maybe we have wounds of rejection, abandonment, shame, fear, powerlessness, hopelessness, or confusion. These unhealed wounds and unacknowledged needs (that often tie back to our childhoods with long histories and patterns) continue to play out over and over again in our lives. Collectively they are the proverbial “iceberg under the water” that drives so much of our painful behavior.”
“Jesus continually comes to us where we are ill and in need and asks us if we want to be well. As we recall our Lenten journey thus far, we know that if we are honest, we all have places in our lives where we are not well, where we are out of communion and experiencing isolation, and where we need healing. And as we discover, it is through communion that healing gushes forth.”
“And yet this is often the very thing we want the most—to be seen, received, and loved. Jesus is truly present to us and receives us.”
“Lord, give me a generous and open heart. May my love for you grow more deeply into a fragrant, life-giving aroma that fills the world around me.”
“This life is not the end. This life is not all there is. The best things on earth are only a small foreshadowing of the beauty of heaven.”
I hope that sample reflection and those quotes give you a feel for this volume. The supplemental weekly videos and other resources on the Ave Maria Site really do make this a self-guided retreat. You can work through it personally, as a family or in a small group. The illustrations are great for meditation.
The material is easy to engage with and written and a very compelling manner. Anyone with a secondary school education could easily worth through this volume. But the working through it might not be easy. It will help you go deeper over the days of Lent. But it will be work. It will challenge readers to be more open and honest with them and with God. It will encourage us to open our hearts, our hurts, our wounds and turn to God for healing and restoration.
This volume was so good I plan on picking up all of them in the series and hope to work through them over the next few Lents and Advents.
An amazing volume I can easily recommend.
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2026 Catholic Reading Plan! For all Lent resource reviews click here.
A Guided Journal from Ave Maria Press:
A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation:
Made for Heaven - Fr. Agustino Torres CFR
Return - Fr. John Burns
Wilderness Within - Sr. Josephine Garrett CSFN
Witness - Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe OP
…
A Guided Advent Journal for Prayer and Meditation:
Adore - Fr. John Burns
Behold - Miriam James Heidland SOLT
Encountering Emmanuel - Heather Khym
Illuminate - Fr. John Nepil
Prepare Your Heart - Fr. Agustino Torres CFR
…
No comments:
Post a Comment