I’m stealing a few minutes in the parking garage to write. I has occurred to me lately that I am focusing quite a bit on others’ writing—college student writing and the writing of students that I tutor through an online homeschooling service—to the exclusion of my own. But today I want to write a little something for Lent.
I find myself rather excited today—on Ash Wednesday--and it’s because of what I have decided to “give up”--to put aside. . . I wrote a message to a friend this morning that ended with my asserting that I would not give up Dr. Pepper this year, because it would simply make me think about Dr. Pepper—all the time. I felt a bit shallow for this; Dr. Pepper is something that I really love, and why wouldn’t I give it up for God? But then I wondered why I should give it up for God. Not whether or not God deserved a sacrifice from me, but what sacrifice would it be, really? Not having something I want. So that every time I wanted a Dr. Pepper I could think that I was doing it for God. Uh huh. Really.
This, I think, is why the Church has shifted emphasis from “sacrifice”—decontextualized, “I’m doing it for God because it’s Lent” kind of sacrifice—or “I’m doing it to lose weight and Lent is an excuse” sacrifice—to conversion, re-orienting one’s self toward God and away from those things that distract us from God. Dr. Pepper has never come between me and God. Not ever. So—I’m keeping it.
I have decided, instead, to “give up” two things for Lent: Worry, and about 4 hours of computer and internet time a night, from 4-8 P.M. or 5-9 P.M. The second is easier to explain. These are key family hours, and I spend them glued to the computer for one reason or another (ostensibly, for work) most of the time. If I remove this distraction, I will do all of the things that I need to do to make the household run more efficiently between school/work time and bed time, which will be serving my family in the way that I should, and seeing God present in our time together. Theoretically. It could work!
The more radical of the two “sacrifices” is worry. If you have read this blog in the past, you will know that worry was my primary source of creativity—or my primary use for my creative energy, depending on your perspective. Worry is, on the one hand, a response to practical concerns. On the other hand, it is a turning away from God that I have struggled with—a refusal to trust and let go of myself in moments of stress and frustration. And I do have some cause for worry right now—about jobs. There are some possibilities for my future that were not there previously. The very presence of these possibilities makes me think that, you know, maybe God is looking out for me after all--that maybe He knows how low I was feeling and that some part of me—something that He created that makes me distinctly me—was in danger of dying. And so an opportunity that I thought I lost came back. Maybe. I admit that seeing God in all of the events in my life as they are happening is very alien to me. I am not one to think that God found that job or apartment for me, or helped me get that loan. But something is telling me that I should give up worry for Lent, and not indulge in that particular bit of narcissism. And you know what? I have noticed what a phenomenally beautiful day it is today, on this lovely Ash Wednesday.
Have a Blessed Lenten Season!
