No Ordinary 40-Days

“Does the Bible say anything about Trader Joe’s peanut butter cups? And since when are we Catholic??”

Those were some rapid-fire questions my 19-year-old son lobbed at me several weeks ago.

He had just beseechingly encouraged me to have one of those delectable little bites of dark-chocolatey-peanut-buttery magic that are such a commodity in this house. (Apparently, he thinks that sometimes we need to stop and savor anew just how special they really are.)

Normally, I am all about a good piece of dark chocolate. Wrap it around a bite of perfectly salty peanut butter – and does it actually get any better or more tempting than that? NOPE.

Alas, in this particular instance, I declined.

Never one to give up easily (on anything), he continued to coax that I just “had to”.

But I not only stuck to my “no”. I also backed it up by explaining: That kind of thing just wouldn’t be part of my life during Lent.

From my son, that drew raised eyebrows and those rapid-fire questions. Because, in his 19-years, I’m sure he has never before seen me actively do anything to observe Lent.

How can I be sure of that? Because I haven’t. Not since back in the days when I was younger than he is, growing up in a Catholic family.

But I wanted this year to be different.

Since he (albeit unknowingly) brought it up, I doubled down and explained that there was more: Not only was I saying no to indulging in chocolate, I had also decided that I would not spend any time on any social media platform during that 40-days.

In my growing-up years, I do remember observing Lent.

Mainly I remember fish (which, at that time, I really did not like) on Fridays, and “giving something up”. I honestly don’t remember specifically anything I ever “gave up”, but I know it was often candy or sweets or other things that made a basket full of that kind of stuff on Easter morning sound like a great reward.

I also vaguely remember slick attempts to get around the sacrificial nature of the whole thing by sacrificing very specifically. For example, maybe I’d give up only CHOCOLATE ice cream. But all the rest was OK. Then there were the times when I’d vow to deprive myself of something I could easily go without anyway. But if I had to name something I’d give up, then I could just make extra sure to avoid it - and consider the Lent box checked. (C’mon! If you ever did Lent as a teenager, you KNOW you did that kind of stuff, too!)

The common thread that runs through all these memories is that, back then, my understanding of Lent was as a Church-imposed period of restriction and deprivation. Jesus suffered for me, so I should “suffer”, too. As if only having VANILLA ice cream for 40-days could compare…

But that is just the truth about how I thought of it.

An even bigger truth?

For as misdirected and halfhearted as my attempts might have been, I really don’t think I ever “made it”. I really don’t recall ever knowing the feeling of arriving at Easter Sunday having accomplished holding firm to that “sacrifice“ – be that as it may - for the whole 40-days.

Lest I digress any further than I already have: Please just know that the thing to take away here is that my thought or understanding of this period on the Church calendar went no deeper than what I’ve just described.

Not for lack of my opportunity to know better:

My parents took me to church regularly.

I attended all the catechism classes. (Even though it meant that, every Saturday morning, I had to leave right as the Smurfs came on. It was small consolation that if we came STRAIGHT home, we could still catch most of Scooby Doo.)

I received all of the sacraments in the Catholic Church, including the one of marriage. I continued to attend and even took my little daughter there until she was a few years old.

So, I had chances to think more deeply and understand more, I just didn’t take full advantage of them.

I know now that coming to a place where we WANT to think and understand more can only happen on whatever timeline is uniquely our own: One formed by the process of the events, experiences, and growth that make up our lives. No amount of expectation imposed upon us by any religious structure or even well-meaning elders can have the same effect. In fact, I have come to believe it can often have the opposite effect.

In the story full of twists and turns and ups and down of my life, I eventually reached that place.

Truthfully, if I count how many years have passed since I regularly attended any actual church, some might consider it cause for concern.

Churches can be wonderful places full of wonderful people. I know for sure that God wants us to live in community with other believers. He tells us that, so it’s important.

I have attended a few churches on a regular basis in my lifetime. Sometimes I felt present in the experience and as if it did a good thing in my soul.

Here is more truth:

Other times, especially when I got to the part of my life where it came to getting an entire family up, ready, dressed, and hustled out the door to church, it was more an exhausting sense of duty. It didn’t amount to much more than checking the box that I had done a “good” thing that week. Yet, not much good came to my soul in all that hustle.

Then there was the whole part about how, to be a good mom, raising good kids to love God, I was “supposed to” have them in church.

I’ll tell you a truth I learned about that, too:

Yes, everyone else enjoyed seeing them all shined up (they really were cute, and not just because they were mine, of course…) and (usually) on their best behavior in their seats on Sunday mornings. But, behind the scenes, the truth of what it took to get everyone there, and the stress it involved: That just wasn’t worth it.

We were a better, happier family staying home.

We could and did acknowledge God better in everyday moments than we ever did in the hour we spent in church - an hour when we were usually just trying to catch our breath and level out our blood pressure after the struggle it took just to GET THERE.

It can feel really lonely to know, as you sit in those seats where you are “supposed to” sit, that THAT is the truth of what it took to be there.

People don’t really talk about that. I wonder: If we did, would we find out that more of us than we realize are making it look good on the outside while we are just BARELY holding it together on the inside? I think we just might.

Anyway, I went through the motions, and I did it for a long time.

Until I didn’t anymore.

If I’m honest, I reached a point where I knew that I felt more at peace in trying to stay close to God doing it my own way. And that is exactly what I chose to do.

Maybe that was right and maybe it was wrong. For me it sure felt more right.

Then, along came 2020.

It brought with it the chance to find out: Because it turned out to be the year that none of us could actually leave our homes and physically attend a church – even those among us who might desperately have wanted to.

I understand and have compassion for the fact that having that taken away was genuinely devastating for some.

At the same time, I also have to admit that it felt as if I had been training for just such a time for at least a decade. In fact, it turns out that it led to something I will always think of as one of the gifts of the pandemic to me.

You see, it so happened that 2020, of all years, would be the year I finally found a church that could really feed my soul in a more real and meaningful way than any other had before – at a point in my life where I was ready to receive it. Never mind that the brick and mortar of it sits in Nashville, TN - hundreds of miles away from my door.

The circumstances of 2020 all at once isolated us, yet brought us together in ways we had never been before. If it had to happen, I am thankful that it happened in an age where we have the technology in nearly every household to connect anywhere we really need to around the world. How and why else would I ever have ended up feeling so at “home” in a church I have never set foot in?

In that one very unique year, I experienced more personal growth - reading, listening to, learning, and working on understanding God’s word than I had in the rest of my 48-years combined.

Part of that learning, thinking, and growing included rethinking what I thought I knew about Lent.

I still know it is meant to make us think more about Jesus. But the way I understand it now feels so much more powerful to me than any arbitrary sense of required restriction ever did.

The way I think about it now makes me not dread the thought of what I am “giving up”. Instead it makes me appreciate the opportunity to transform some of the things I automatically do or enjoy into extra moments to remember – REALLY REMEMBER – that I owe it all to Him.

The choice to do that this year came with no big announcement. No preparation, or enjoying things for “the last time” before I would give them up.

No telling anyone other than myself.

Instead, just a quiet personal decision to use the time when I would automatically do or think about certain things – reach for a piece of chocolate after dinner, or log on to a social account and scroll - as a conscious reminder that, instead, I could think about how I could use that time to better honor the sacrifice He made for all of us. For me.

I loved the special, quieter time with my own thoughts. I even used some of it to work on creating this website and blog - to better position myself to share my thoughts for a long time to come.

Finally, do you want to know the biggest difference between my Lent of this year and all the Lents of my past?

This year, with my new understanding of it and reasons for wanting to honor it - I “made it”.

I never lost sight of the fact that these days were not ordinary ones.

It was worth every bit of “sacrifice”.

I know for sure that I grew.

This small redirection of my time and attention; this slight withdrawal from the crowd to make deposits in my faith; it was an extraordinary 40-days that blessed me more abundantly than I could ever deserve.