of Lions and Lilies: Lenten Lessons

It has been just one week since the joyous celebration of Easter day. These days of celebration have given me time to reflect on our Lenten journey, with gratitude and much hope.

Happy Easter!

Lent may be one of the things that makes me most grateful to be Catholic. I marvel at God, the great psychologist, who grants us this season of penitence to strip down our lives and identify those things that are keeping us from flourishing (in Him!). I cannot, CANNOT, imagine Easter without Lent.

I have a history of making Lenten resolutions that are impossible for me to keep. Throw in two little children whom I want to form spiritually and a husband with whom I want to grow spiritually, and I find myself going strong for about one week and falling hard for the next five. I was so determined that it wouldn't happen this year. I think, for me, part of my problem in past years was that I, Emily Anne, decided what my Lenten resolution should be. Not God. "No sir, God", I seemed to say, "I know better so just keep your inspirations to yourself!"

It seems that every year He seems fit to send His own sufferings my way which make my over-the-top legalistic resolutions a bit hard to keep. This year, I decided to make my resolutions a little less rigid to give Him room to work. Guess what...He did? For Joe and I, Lent's 40 days helped us to identify those things that were holding us back from joy...habits, ways of thinking, patterns of fear and selfishness, that caused us to collapse in on ourselves instead of seeking security in the love of God. Moreover, the lack of rigidity allowed us to choose daily a path of sacrifice and sanctity as opposed to feeling as though we were compelled by some over-enthusiastic promise. Ironically enough, choosing the path of sacrifice out of love caused me to live a more sacrificial and more formative Lent than I have in many years. I know my husband can say the same.

Our children? Well, I certainly tried hard to form them in the ways of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving as part of our family culture. Admittedly, I realized that my desires for our daughter's participation in Lenten activities was slightly overzealous due to her age. However, we decorated our house for Lent, baked and crafted Lenten lessons, prayed daily, read much, and worked hard at de-cluttering our home and donating those things we didn't need (even though Liliana thought she did and had to seriously let go as we gave them away!). All in all, I think it was a rousing success.

Lenten pretzels on Ash Wednesday

The best measure of it? That 8 days later we are still working hard at the habits we formed during Lent. It wasn't about giving something up and then dropping it. It was about choosing to sacrifice something or choosing to incorporate something that we would be better off without (or with) all the time. I did have moments...even a full week...of falling back into less disciplined habits. In past years I would have thrown my hands up and given up, but this year maybe my stubborn pride wasn't SO huge that I wasn't able to accept the grace to try again.