Good Friday with my daughter Karen was powerful. There was a real Lent and a real Easter Day; the grave has released its dead. Before I forget, here lies my reflection on Lent 2011.
It started OK with Ash Wednesday, and the next day I felt God's open arms of welcome. As time went on, my observances waned, and my learnings increased. Towards the end, a big depression came along, which thank goodness lifted off as I found a new purpose.
My new purpose, you'll laugh to learn, is not to burden my family. To that end, healthy habits et cetera.
The depression included a grief reaction to selling the Amherst house when the last paperwork was completed. I'm still resisting filing the tax papers away but that's just my normal paralysis of will. (Maybe next Lent??)
Two main learnings (God shows stuff perhaps not thought of when you adopt the original Lenten Rule):
One: re-learning that the key to answered prayer, healing, and perhaps even heaven itself is FAITH. How often do I pray for increased faith? As I increase faith, the corollary is increased realization of how little certainty we really have about all.
The other learning has to do with sugar, avoiding it. Trying to give it up for Lent, I was able to see part of the depression as "sugar blues." This realization came with the help of a N.Y. Times Magazine article. I felt better right away when I started to avoid sugar. God help me keep it up.
The observances of praying and reading Lenten books were moth-eaten; but I kept going back to them. Regarding writing about Lent--well, see for yourself on the blog. This entry reconstitutes the third, I believe. It also seemed that the commentaries I read were better than anything I might write, but oh well.
I'm consumed with self-consciousness, thinking this will seem silly to others--renouncing sugar, re-discovering FAITH, praying and writing imperfectly, and an other-directed worldly goal. Well, what if it does; it's truly me, without irony or wit.
A purpose of this blog section is to give an account of one woman seriously loving God and trying her imperfect best to follow Christ.
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