This year, I decided to do Lent.
I’m not sure why. Others from my church were doing it so I thought I would too. I didn’t even really know what it was about, but I like some of the ancient liturgies, and thought I would participate.
I sort of knew that Lent meant giving up something as a way of being more reflective leading up to Easter. To remind me of the sacrifice, and what Jesus went through for me. I like the idea of being more thoughtful about Easter. For Christians, Easter is our biggest deal! Pastor Dave in his description of Lent used words like “special focus” and “leaning in to God”. And I like that. I think that its what drew me to do Lent in the first place.
I decided to give up chocolate. This was a week ago.
Me and chocolate have a very strong love relationship. I will lie for chocolate. I will hide it and sneak it when no one is watching. I will have more than anyone else of the family block. I know my general diet is out of control when I buy myself chocolate bars as a treat after a grocery shop. I will choose chocolate hands-down over any other treat on offer. So, I thought giving up chocolate was my serious attempt at Lent.
You know how when you decide to give up anything, you see it everywhere…?
After deciding to do Lent, I thought I should do some research on what it actually is. The wrong way round of doing things! Pretty much every search I made on the Internet made me take a downhill dive into “Ugh this is so depressing! Why did I think of even doing this?” But I’m the sort of person that once committed, I stick to it – and I’d already told my husband I was, so I couldn’t back out!
“The purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer for Easter through prayer, doing penance, mortifying the flesh, repentance of sins, almsgiving, and self-denial.” It starts on Ash Wednesday and finishes on Palm Sunday. 6 weeks!
Ok, so it was a little more involved than I thought. At least, I’ve got the self-denial part sorted…
I wondered if I had made a mistake. I am a Christian. I love what I have as the result of Easter – the love, grace, mercy, forgiveness of sin, new life, spiritual blessings, and so on. These are all positives and I like to live in the positive, but this Lent thing seemed so depressing. I mean, they (the traditional liturgical churches I read up about) take all the ‘hallelujahs’ out of their songs and prayers for six weeks and sing more serious dirge-like hymns.
So –
Doing penance – paying for my sins (past and present, they’re already paid for! So what would the point be?). Did I have to recall my sin, and then in some way start doing good stuff to try and balance my good deeds to my bad deeds?
Mortifying the flesh – years ago I watched one of those Dan Brown novels made into a movie where there is a scene that shows a young priest whipping himself, skin and flesh torn off his body, as a way of self-punishment; and symbolically trying to put to death his flesh that keeps doing bad stuff. I didn’t want to do that.
Repentance of sins – should I start a list?
Almsgiving – so how much is enough to give to cover everything I’ve done wrong in my life? I’m not a saint! Is giving to others meant to help?
Self-denial – just gotta keep saying no to chocolate for the next little while.
Regretting my decision to do Lent, I then decided to search the Internet for “positives of doing Lent”. I didn’t really get the answers I was looking for. I wanted Lent to be positive, not negative. Was I not really getting the point of it?
This is where I have landed as a first year participant in Lent: I use chocolate to make me feel good. The ingredients that make up chocolate give me a hit. I think that’s why it and I have the kind of relationship we do. But the kick I get from chocolate doesn’t last. It doesn’t fill me up emotionally for long, which when I evaluate why I love chocolate, it makes me sadly aware of my life’s giant lack.
One of the articles about Lent and self-denial I read online said this, “We can shrink our souls to the size of life’s pleasures, or we can expand our awareness to the size of our soul. The more we seek futilely after material pleasure, the more we start to settle, we accept a modified joy, a compromised happiness, we figure ‘good enough’ is as good as anything ever gets.”
Honestly, what I find in Jesus is more satisfying to my soul than any other thing, and this can overflow, can expand my soul with pleasure into all areas of my life – when I get in the right space to receive what he has for me. And for me, I experience this mostly in nature. Getting away from work, and home, and routine, and stuff – and just hanging out by the river, or wading in the ocean, a bush walk, sitting at a lookout, or something similar.
So for Lent this year, I have decided to just concentrate on the self-denial aspect, as my introduction to this practice. I’ve decided that the giving up of chocolate is going to be to get myself in a mindful place, a more meditative, reflective place of denying myself of my satisfying-only-for-a-moment lover, to be filled up with the things that connect me to Jesus. Emptying the places I let chocolate fill me up, so that my soul can be filled up with something so much better.
We’ll see how it goes…maybe next year, I’ll try mortifying the flesh…