Happy Lent, everyone!
I know, I know – Lent isn’t really known for its joy. But this year, I’m choosing to look at Lent not so much as a season of sacrifice but more as an adventure with God. Giving something up for Lent will inevitably teach me some things – it always does – and I want to pay attention to what I’m experiencing along the way.
photo courtesy of ©Depositphotos.com / nilaya
That’s part of why Arman and I are co-hosting this series, Adventures in Lent – we figure a weekly check-in will help us stay on track, and that walking through this season together will provide all of us some encouragement, as we share in what is very definitely a deeply personal yet also corporate experience. For the next forty days, Christians all over the world will be giving things up, choosing to give more generously, and focusing on repentance in significant ways. We will each seek God in unique and personal ways – but we will be doing it together.
We hope you’ll join us each week to swap stories about the journey. Think of it as a sort of virtual campfire on the beach: the coffee’s on, the sun is just coming up (or just going down, depending on where in the world you are), and the past few days have been quite the adventure. This is an excellent opportunity to take a breather and tell some stories before we hit the trail for a few more days.
This year’s adventure began a couple weeks ago for me, when I started to think and pray about what I should give up for Lent this year. I’ll confess – there have been years when I have looked forward to Lent, knowing what a season of spiritual growth it can be, but this is not one of those years. Over the past few months I have experienced so much loss; Lent, with its emphasis on sacrifice, felt like one more hard thing, and for awhile, I was actually dreading it. I couldn’t even bring myself to put my Christmas tree away for the longest time, because saying goodbye to Christmas meant saying hello to almost-Lent, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.
But then I read about the February 2015 Synchroblog that’s coming up, and realized that renewal is exactly what I need, but I’ve never really thought about Lent in relation to that word. So I started to make a mental shift
from: “Lent means I have to give something up”
to: “Lent represents a season of renewal.”
And as I held that shift up to the Lord in my heart, the word that surfaced was rest.
It’s just part of how I’m wired, but I’ve always needed a fair bit of time to wind down in the evenings before I can fall asleep, and in seasons of high stress, I tend to stay up really late, because winding down takes longer. I’m also naturally a night owl, which doesn’t help that much. There’s usually a small window around 10:00pm when I can fall asleep, but if I miss it, I can easily be up past 2:00am with no regrets… until the alarm goes off in the morning. Which leaves me tired, and at less than my best, the next day – which means I handle stress less well – which means it takes me longer to de-stress the next day… and it can spiral into a really unhealthy cycle if I let it.
So for Lent this year, knowing how much I need renewal, I am going to give up my unhealthy sleep patterns. This doesn’t mean that I won’t occasionally stay up really late, because honestly, I like to – but it does mean that most nights, I’m going to try to make a habit of winding down earlier, and getting a good night’s sleep. It means I’m going to have to find other ways of dealing with stress, which will probably make me a healthier person – and I’m sure that’s at least part of why I need to make better rest a focus over these next few weeks, tho I’m sure He has other reasons and other things to teach me that I can’t even imagine yet. And that’s part of the adventure.
It sounds like such a lame adventure: I’m going to sleep more. But oh, the things that God could do with a healthier, happier, less-stressed, and less-sleep-deprived me… So maybe it’s not that lame after all. 😉
So what is your adventure in Lent going to look like this year? I’d love to hear all about it.
This week’s link-up is hosted right here at Simple Felicity, so just go ahead and add your link per the instructions below.
Not a blogger, but still want to participate? Excellent! Just go ahead and post your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, using the hashtag #adventuresinlent. (You can actually use any other social media platform you want to – we just can’t guarantee that we’ll see it unless you leave us a comment that will tell us where to look.)
Here’s to the next stretch of the journey!
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