I love lent.
I didn’t always. It used to be a long, bleak stretch of late winter punctuated by giving up something that make Minnesota winters bearable. Yes, I’m talking six weeks of subzero temps and no cocoa. It’s a serious deprivation.
I’ve given up chocolate for lent every year since Jay and I got married.
It was his idea.
Sometimes, I can’t believe I didn’t divorce him the second he suggested it.
He gave up booze.
This is huge not because booze is his chocolate equivalent, it’s not. If it were, he’d have died of acute alcoholism decades ago. It’s huge because lent falls at the end of the basketball season, tournament time, championship time and the national coach’s convention that occurs at the Final Four. For Jay, giving up booze for lent was the equivalent of starting your new diet on Thanksgiving.
I don’t think there was a single year where he successfully made it all the way through lent without having a single drink.
Now he just gives up specific distillations, like scotch. Yeah, it’s pretty lame. I give up chocolate, not Hershey’s kisses.
I discovered fairly early on that if I’m not eating chocolate, the options left, dessert-wise, were hardly worth the trouble. So giving up chocolate has pretty much come to mean giving up desserts. When the kids were little, I still made cookies but even they had to admit that snickerdoodles and gingersnaps were a waste of time.
No, I love gingersnaps!
Anyway, I do not have superhuman will power; I take Sundays off. In the Catholic Church, every Sunday is a feast day and the Feast takes precedent over the Fast. My mother, my mother-in-law and my grandmother all told me that and those women are Saints, so if you want to argue take it up with them. I dare you.
Okay, (I’m rolling my eyes and heaving a sigh) count the days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. There are forty six days. How long is lent? THAT’S RIGHT, ITS FORTY DAYS. What are the extra six days? SUNDAYS.
So go ahead and think I’m cheating when I admit I do eat chocolate on Sundays. Not only am I NOT cheating, you are committing a sin (I forget what its called) by thinking God’s standards aren’t good enough for you. They’re good enough for me.
Besides, about 25 years ago now, I had an oreo cookie blackout* during lent. I don’t want that to happen again.
Giving up chocolate (and therefore dessert) isn’t easy for me but it gets easier every year. As in all of life; attitude is everything.
I no longer think of lent as a time of deprivation but as a spiritual boot camp.
Everyone I know is concerned about fitness and health. I’m no different. When we are young, we can lose a few lbs and whip our bodies into shape by giving up cookies or beer for a week or so. We see results quickly because young metabolisms work that way. Then you hit thirty and suddenly what used to take four weeks now takes four months. Then you hit forty and what used to take…
I’m in my mid fifties now. I can injure myself while sleeping. I get fat by thinking about food. I’ve gained a pound this morning just writing about giving up chocolate. My body, which used to do my bidding, has completely betrayed me.
Lent reminds me that it’s not my body that matters.
Physical fitness is not a waste of time (it sort of is) but the older we get, the harder and more time consuming it becomes to maintain that fitness we strive for and I believe that’s part of God’s plan to redirect our attention to what really matters: soul fitness.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could get totally buff by going to the gym once a week?
You only have to go to church once a week. That’s it; once a week to maintain that shining light inside you that doesn’t dim just because your body is aging and breaking down. Once a week and that light actually gets brighter! That’s why so many old folks go to church every day; it’s not because they fear death, it’s because they can feel the benefit of that light gaining strength.
If you could maintain your perfect body weight by doing one simple exercise for a measly six weeks a year, wouldn’t you do it? Of course you would! You’re not an idiot.
You can spend your time working out and watching every calorie but I got news for you; you’re still going to get old, fat, weak, wrinkled and sore. Physical fitness is a wonderful life habit to develop but in the end its nowhere near as important as shining up that inner light that age can’t dim. Age, weakness, sickness and even feeble mindedness can’t dim the light that is your soul. Only inattention can dull that light. Church once a week, confession twice a year (isn’t your soul worth the attention you pay your teeth? And come on; confession isn’t as uncomfortable or time consuming as the dentist**. When was the last time your priest said “I know you just came in for a cleaning but you need surgery. Today.”?? Yeah. That’s right; never. Go to confession.) and give up a little something you’ll barely miss for lent. No matter what you do, someday your body will stop and you’ll be left with nothing but that inner light, which is what you are really made of. Take care of it.
*My friends and family know the story. I don’t know if they believe me but its true; I ate an entire bag of oreos between the grocery store and home. We lived six blocks from the store. I have no memory of eating the cookies, just of arriving home with an empty bag the seat beside me and a sort of…cloud of cookie dust hanging in the air. And black teeth.
** I haven't been to the dentist in four years.