Easter is on its way. For those of us who observe Lent, that season is coming to an end. (FYI: Lent is the 40 days prior to Easter Sunday.) Since Lent/Easter is my least favorite part of the Christian calendar, and no, you do not want to know the reason why, I pretty much ignored the season and tolerated the hymns, scriptures, etc. for a long time. I just didn't 'get it'.
As a kid, Lent was the time you didn't want to eat dinner at your Catholic friend's. Most likely, there wouldn't be any meat - heretical in meat hearty Oklahoma - and you couldn't count on mac and cheese being served. There were always too many vegetables on a Catholic household dinner table during Lent.
Several years later as a mature adult, I studied more about what the observation of Lent really meant. I found my attitude toward it changing. For me the 40 days of Lent became less about 'giving something up' and more about self reflection. Ironically, the first time got serious about observing Lent, I gave something up: Cigarettes. By the time I finally decided to turn this addiction over to God, I was so secretive about my dirty little habit many people I knew casually were surprised I even smoked. I started smoking when I was 19. I quit many times. I even quit for three years (pregnancy, nursing), and I WENT BACK to smoking. I tried tapering off. I tried nicotine gum. I tried willpower. There's no such thing as one or two cigarettes for me; it's always been all or nothing. It took the 40 days of Lent in 2000 for me to totally stop. And, yes, I still want to smoke, but each day I choose not to. I felt I had 40 days of support, and that support ultimately let me turn my back on the dreadful habit which was killing me.
Often, I find myself using Lent to 'gear myself up' to do something I dread. The big one in this category which comes to mind was nursing a dying friend. Another distasteful task one year was to offer forgiveness to someone who didn't deserve it. That statement is why I spent Lent getting my head in the right mental space and losing the judgment, so I could offer true forgiveness.
Another Lenten observation was also about 'giving up something'. Guess what I gave up for 40 days? Profanity. Now, anyone who really knows me knows how profane my language can be. Nowadays, it's nothing like it was before I gave up profanity for Lent. During that particular Lenten observation, I discovered using profanity was less about temperament and more about habit. I quickly realized it was a habit I neither needed nor wanted. Originally, I used profanity as a way of notifying the male half of the world that I wasn't a sweet 'girl' who could be ignored. Nice 'girls' didn't use profanity. Women did. In the last 50 years, profanity has become habitual language used by almost everyone. I've never liked being everyone, so losing profane language as a habit became my new normal.
One year my Lenten task was not about 'giving up something'; it was about 'giving something'. That Lent was the start of my weekly letter writing. Initially, I wrote to a few people - an elderly person who was tremendously important to me while I was a teen, and a young person who needed adult encouragement, and answering a friend who was writing me. Three letters have morphed into ten to twelve letters each week. What started over Lent one year has become a weekly commitment. My experience has been people are so starved for personal mail, no one wants me to stop writing even when the original reason for the letters has resolved. Unfortunately, my letter writing has affected my blog writing time.
My discovery over the last 20+ years is Lenten observation is really about personal reflection. I think of it as taking stock of who I am and where I am in the spiritual journey of life. Some years it results in a direct 40 day action plan. Other years it can be as simple as a daily reflection or prayer.
Happy Easter.
