I'm not Catholic so I don't have any religious obligation to observe lent. It's not something I always do or feel like I ought to do. But I do think that fasting is a very healthy discipline. And some years the lent season provides as good a timeframe as any for long term fasting.
Last year I decided I wanted to give up Facebook for awhile. I made this decision just before the lent season and wasn't sure how long I should give it up for. I've had friends give things up for entire years and that felt so daunting to me. But a week or two wasn't going to cut it either. It needed to be long enough that it was difficult and habit forming. Since lent was just around the corner I decided that was as good a timeframe as any.
I knew I spent too much time on Facebook and that the impersonal approach to personal issues there was causing me a lot of stress, so for roughly 6 weeks I nixed Facebook and started replacing the time I would have spent on Facebook with more productive things---one of which was blogging. And I've been blogging ever since.
This year, I'm not planning to give anything up for lent. Pregnancy has limited most things for me anyway, haha. But I am finding that for whatever reason (pregnancy? winter?) I am feeling completely frustrated spiritually and emotionally. I want to get out of this rut.
I have a tendency to withdraw when I'm going through something and it never really helps. So rather than sacrificing something, I'm going to commit to doing. I'm going to make an effort to do the daily things that keep me full that I haven't been doing. Praying, reading, engaging...on a daily basis. So I'm not "giving up" something, I'm gaining something. But it will still be a gain that is earned through discipline. To quote Aristole,
"We are what we repeatedly do."
You really do have to give up enough things while pregnant!
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