More than midway through Lent

We must be, because they've started the baptismal classes at our church, in preparation for Easter morning.

Already? It feels like I've barely gotten into the rhythm of this, the barest of seasons. Even at forty days long, it doesn't feel like there's enough time to truly sink into the spare, ascetic aesthetic of Lent.

But I begin to. It's funny, but for all that Lent is so simple, it's hard to write about. Or at least, it's hard to blog about. I imagine there isn't a Christian blogger out there who doesn't hear Jesus' words about hiding the fact that you're fasting whenever he or she sits down to tell the internet how Lent's going. Eep.

Lent: easy to journal about, hard to blog about.

It should be a bumper sticker, right?

But still, I think I can say this: Lent's got my attention this year. It's got my attention and is focusing that attention on how easy I am on myself most of the year. Oh, I'm hard on myself in that firstborn, Type-A I-am-never-good-enough-no-one-can-love-me way, but that way is silly and a lie, and what's more, I know it's silly and a lie, and frankly, most of the times when I do it these days, it's an indulgence and it's not truly scary, not the way it was back when I was a teenager.

This Lent, it feels like fasting is letting me hear a call to - well, what? a call to maturity. I think.

(I'm figuring this out as I type, and what I just typed is making me stop and ponder a moment.)

But, yes, maturity. I think so. I think I need to be stricter with myself, but not in the bad old adolescent ways. I shouldn't condemn myself. (Because who is He who condemns? who has the right? not me. Not me.). Neither should I force myself through whatever my fool head has convinced me is what must be done, blindly pushing through fear and pain and the clanging warning bells of my intuition. I learned that lesson back when I broke both my arms, not at once, but one after the other, because I had decided I was going to get something done and didn't stop to think. Idiot.

No, now I will think. And now I will accept God's grace (with God's help). But I want to work, and I am seeing this Lent that I have been too easy on myself.

Not too kind to myself. That's different. I was thinking yesterday that exercising, though it feels self-indulgent, isn't. Would I own a dog and not exercise it? Of course not. Should I be less kind to my own body than I'd be to the body of an animal I was responsible for? Of course not. That sort of thing, that's kindness, not indulgence. At least at this stage of my life.

But . . . but fasting has a way of pointing out all the small things I do to ease my own way through my days. That I'm not so much virtuous as indulged. (Oh gosh, I don't even want to write that, because now I'm scared all my indulgences will disappear. Can I say I'm not sure? Ay-yi-yi.) I think I'm learning from it. I think. Golly, now I want to go and rewrite this whole post. Oh well: let's just be clear that this is all thinking, and not concluding, okay?

And all this is subject to whatever I learn in Easter. Because we don't fast forever, and often what's really important lasts through the feasting times too - you need to wait and see which lessons stick. I wonder if this one will?

How are you all doing, mid-Lent?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell