A season of discipline for grown-ups

Lent approaches.  (listen to me heave a big sigh.)

Lent, for those of you who may not really be familiar with the term, is the 40 weekdays before Easter, beginning with Ash Wednesday (March 9) and ending the few days just before Easter - Holy (Maundy) Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.  Lent is a season observed mostly by Catholics, and also by denominations within the Protestant community (although with different traditions/customs than Catholic churches).

I grew up Catholic.  Indeed, since I have not gone through classes and been formally recieved into the Episcopal church, I suppose I can still call myself a Catholic - although I haven't attended Mass in, oh, about 7.5 years.  My husband grew up in a Protestant denomination; as a compromise (and so as not to confuse the children!) we attend an Episcopal church.  Our older daughter was baptized in a Catholic church; our younger daughter was baptized in our current church.  Oh, my head is starting to hurt - so complicated!

Anyway.  When I was growing up, right up until I moved out of my parents' house and perhaps for a few years after that, I observed Lent as a Catholic.  No meat on Ash Wednesday, went to church on that day, no meat on the Fridays during Lent.  Always went to church on Palm Sunday.  Usually helped my mom take baskets with special ethnic "Easter foods" up to church on Holy Saturday morning, to be blessed.  Sat through an endless Holy Saturday vigil which sometimes lasted until almost midnight.  I went to a Catholic gradeschool so in my memory of those years, it seems like we were forever doing the Stations of the Cross during Lent.  It was the whole nine yards, for a good many years, including...

"Giving up something" during Lent. Well, what does that mean? I think I gave up eating chocolate during Lent, several times.  Two years ago, I gave up reading anything during Lent except the Bible (I think there may be a post on this blog about that!)...I don't remember how successful I was with that.  On the website http://www.crivoice.org/, Lent is defined as a season "traditionally...marked by penitential prayer, fasting, and almsgiving...Most Christian churches that observe Lent at all focus on it as a time of prayer, especially penance, repenting for failures and sin as a way to focus on the need for God's grace.  It is really a preparation to celebrate God's marvelous redemption at Easter, and the resurrected life that we live, and hope for, as Christians....Lent is a way to place ourselves before God humbled, bringing in our hands no price whereby we can ourselves purchase our salvation."

Those are some powerful words.  How do they translate to me, in my day-to-day "stuff"?  In what way would I combine the above description with my Catholic background and my current Episcopal affiliation?  I no longer do the "don't eat meat on Fridays" thing (although I will admit, not doing that took me a while to get used to).  Where I am these days, religiously speaking, is a complex thing - and it's made more important because now, I have children for whom I have to be an example.  So, I'm not sure, this year, what to do with "Lent".  Somehow, compared with the intensity of the description of Lent above, "giving up playing Farmville during Lent" just doesn't seem to fit, somehow, you know?

Well, I have three more days to figure it out.

Thanks for reading,
Jen

Guess not; and, the SAHM life; and, the Bible challenge!

I guess that "30 posts in 30 days" thing wasn't for me. Sometimes I think about blogging and when I get up here, can't remember any of the things I wanted to write about. Plus, it has been so stinkin' cold lately that all I want to do after the girls go to bed is curl up under about 10 blankets and read. Honestly, I've taken to wearing a hat around the house! And it's cold up here by the computer, too.

Yesterday was a long, long day. School was called off here, and so S. and K. were home all day. S. had a general doctor's appointment scheduled, and I'm glad because otherwise I think we'd all have been nuts by the end of the day. I wasn't in the best mood as it was. K. was feeling the winter blah's as well. She said "I just wish something would happen!!". I said I did too! I so much wish there were some indoor gym or something here; sort of like the play areas at the fast-food places, only bigger and minus the food. Somewhere the kids could go and run around, play, climb, get some exercise. There just isn't anywhere to go on snow days; playing outside is only fun for so long, especially when it's as cold as it's been here.

My mood has been pretty dismal anyway, for a long time. I just really dislike feeling "trapped" here at home. My kids are great kids, they aren't troublemakers, they get along relatively well....so in those areas I don't have anything to complain about. But I just hate being here all the time. I know some women out there might look at my circumstances and say, "But you've got it good! You get to not work, and stay home with your kids!", which is a good thing, yes, I agree. BUT.....I just kind of feel like there is a whole other part of me, a large array of skills and talents and brain cells, that are definitely NOT being utilized by being a SAHM. A question arises often in my thoughts, when I am at my wits' end here at home, why would God bless me with intelligence and a facility for working with the public, and here I am in this situation? I know this time is temporary; for financial reasons (as in, we're broke!) I will be going back to work probably in the fall. I also know that, when I am working again, I may have to trust the care of my kids to someone else besides Brad for short periods of time.....and that will be difficult! There is a certain amount of mental comfort in being able to be home for one's children, and know firsthand that they are alright. I don't plan on finding full-time work, but no matter where I end up working, inevitably we will need a third party to watch S. and K. at some point in the week.

From a faith standpoint, I might venture to say that maybe this period of not being a working mom was God's way of forcing me to focus more on my family, on our home. Certainly I have at least attempted over the past 13 months to take a hard look at our house and try to get rid of stuff. I know I have been able to pay more attention to our money situation. Perhaps in the long run I will see this all as an "enforced period of stillness", or something. Sigh.

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A couple from our church has put out a reading challenge for Lent, called something like "The Bible Feast" - the challenge is to read only the Bible for the entire period of Lent. No newspapers, no magazines, no books (gasp!!!) other than the Bible. I am considering taking the challenge. I always have plans to read the Bible - the whole thing, not just parts - but of course I have LOTS of distracting piles of other books laying around. However, Lent is only 40 days; I really would like to read the whole Bible; I'm wondering if, by doing this, God might be able to answer some of my "life dilemmas" (see above!); and.....I think my soul needs this! I read so many blogs written by Christian women, and these are women who truly do spend quality time almost every day praying, reading the Bible, reading devotional books. Just reading their blogs and witnessing how they keep their faith in God even through extreme trials has enriched my own faith life. Maybe spending time every day reading the Bible is a more direct route to the same outcome! Perhaps that is the reason why I've been led to reading these blogs all these months. And you know, the freaky thing is, it was the woman in the same couple who are proposing "The Bible Feast" who pointed me to the first blog I ever read, which in turn led me to other Christian blogs......hmmmm. Coincidence, or God at work?

J.