Getting Ready for Lent

My husband and I were talking this week about what we wanted to give up for Lent. I think we've found something, and so that's good.

It was funny how I knew that it was right. It was that familiar, sinking feeling in my stomach. The "oh, I'm gonna hate this, this'll be so good for me, hunh?" feeling.


I'm wondering about though, is how to involve my children in our Lenten disciplines. Fasting should be a freewill offering, I'm thinking, and preschoolers probably aren't quite up to that.

I'm wondering if the answer lies in something my priest taught me: that whenever you fast, in addition to giving something up, you should take something on. For example, if you fast from lunch during Lent, you should use the time you usually spend eating in prayer. If you fast from discretionary spending, you should donate what you save to charity. That sort of thing.

So maybe there's something extra I can do with the kids during Lent, to introduce them to the positive side of fasting, before they're old enough to be introduced to the negative. (By the way, I mean positive and negative in the mathematical sense, in the sense of something being present or missing, not in the sense of good and bad.) Something like Scripture songs with breakfast, or buying something for the canned food drive whenever we go grocery shopping and letting Bess pick the can. I don't know. But it's what I'm thinking about right now.



peace of Christ to you,
Jessica