Giving It Up For Lent

"Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy" — Pope Francis 

We are fast approaching the Season of Lent.

Lent is the 40 day period leading up to Easter that begins on Ash Wednesday (this year it begins on March 5th) and ends on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday.

The 40 day period is symbolic of significant biblical events, including Jesus’ 40 days of fasting and temptation in the desert. Jesus was led to the desert by The Holy Spirit and while he ate no food, he drank water. Some biblical scholars have written that this sojourn into the desert (where Satan was said to reside) is like a shadow story of Adam in the garden of Eden. While Adam and Eve were successfully tempted in the garden by the snake (who was Satan), Jesus met the same temptations in the desert and overcame it.

The idea of his fasting was to weaken his humanity in order to strengthen his Divinity. All of this, of course, leads up to his crucifixion and ultimate resurrection.

Lent asks us to sacrifice some of our comforts. The things in our day to day lives that distract us from the ultimate goal of human existence - namely, to surrender completely to God. During Lent, we not only give up some of these comforts (certain foods, distractions such as social media and self pursuits) but we are meant to come into daily prayer and reflection.

We are meant to turn our attention to Christ.

And boy, have we found ourselves in a world of plenty. Not only a world of material abundance but a world of never-ending distractions. We never have to be bored.

And as it turns out, this has not been good for us.

This 40 day period, then, is a time to remove some of these creature comforts, along with our distractions of choice, and enter into a deep, reverential, contemplative relationship with Christ.

As someone who is still so new in my relationship with Christ and Christianity, this is really exciting for me. I’m also walking towards this with a good dollop of reluctance. I love my creature comforts and am curious as to how this will all go.

This 40 day Lent period will end on the day of my Baptism. It’s been a huge journey, to put it mildly, to get here. And it’s really just getting started.

It began with a plea to God to take what I had been attempting to carry, in isolation, my entire life. Namely, this illness that I have walked with since I was 7 years old and all of its associated complications and structures. I had no idea, at the time that I made this plea, that I would end up here. In fact, if you had asked me even 3 years ago if I would ever consider following any kind of religion, I would have laughed and said NO, rather emphatically.

This is the incredible part of GIVING IT ALL TO GOD. We have no clue as to how that will look. We really don’t. After all, we’ve been the managers of our own lives for so long that we can’t think past the end of our own nose. It’s simply not possible.

And just to paint the picture as clearly as possible, that day that I gave it all to God, there was not one part of me that hesitated. In other words, this surrender was 100%. I have learned that God will wait, with infinite patience, for us to be CERTAIN. Our pleas and our petitions must be 100%.

The truth has no room for uncertainty.

As I had come to all of this around this illness - Crohn’s Disease - I have felt it leave my body in slow ebbs and I have felt huge portions of it fall away in a moment. It’s been surreal.

I have had overwhelming revelations as to how I have, through my own ignorance and misunderstanding. held this disease and its associated patterns in place; how, through various attempts to control myself, my environment and my own bodily truth, I have been at war with myself since I was a little girl. I have seen how I have gathered up all of my energy into a little ball in my body and have declared it a ‘No fly Zone.’

And here’s what I know. I know that I never would have seen this had I not handed the whole thing over to something well beyond myself.

I had taken the love that was inherent in me - that is inherent in ALL of us at the very beginning - and I tossed it out the window in order to be liked, loved, approved of, accepted.

This, of course, is the Autoimmune Personality in a nutshell.

So I, in and of myself, could not have seen or corrected this. The Program was running too efficiently. I was too caved in on myself, as we all are. This was the lie I was sold and subsequently bought in the New Age arena.

That I could heal myself.

It’s an absurd and cruel lie.

One of the most successful and yet mysteriously healing programs on the planet is The 12 Steps in Alcoholics Anonymous. Its originator, Bill Wilson, who was an atheist during his years of alcholism, discovered through his sobriety that he simply could not do this on his own; that he was, as he sited in the very first step of the 12 steps, “…powerless over this problem, and that his life had become unmanageable.” He learned that - cue the 2nd step in AA - “…a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

Did you read that? “A power greater than ourselves…” Not, our higher self…not our Soul…something GREATER than ourselves.

This is what it means to truly Surrender. To finally, once and for all, see with clear eyes, that we cannot manage our own suffering. And it comes as such relief.

If you believe that you have been designed Intelligently…that this whole Universe has, as its Source, an Author, than might it be time to hand yourself over? After all, if a machine in your home malfunctioned, you would never ask the machine to fix itself. You would send it back to the Manufacturer.

Even if you are not Catholic, you can certainly endeavour to join the millions, perhaps even billions of people around the world who are, at this time, gearing to give up something for Lent. You can join multitudes of people around the world who will come into greater Communion with Christ over the next 40 days.

There is great potency in numbers.

It might just change your life.