Lent is a very important season in my life.\u00a0 I did not grow up ‘giving something up for Lent’.\u00a0 That is traditionally a Catholic practice and I was raised both Methodist and Presbyterian.\u00a0 To be honest when I was little we spent most Easter weekends at the lake and didn’t even go to church.\u00a0 We went to church on a regular basis, but Easter weekend was usually a beautiful spring weekend and so we went to the lake\u00a0to get\u00a0the property\u00a0ready\u00a0for the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fast forward to my life as a wife and mother.\u00a0 Lent is the single most important time of the year for me.\u00a0 Holy\u00a0Week is truly my favorite week of the year.\u00a0 Yep, it trumps Christmas and birthdays and Halloween (and you know how I LOVE\u00a0Halloween).\u00a0\u00a0As an adult I have found not only a church and group of church friends that inspire me to be more\u00a0Christ-like but also a husband\u00a0who is a fantastic spiritual partner.\u00a0 \u00a0I think because I wasn’t raised with ‘giving something up for Lent’ as a requirement, it feels so much more real to me.\u00a0 I take this season of discipline very seriously.\u00a0 Every year I pick something that I love, but that I should give up.\u00a0 One year it was tortillas.\u00a0 Seems minor, but it was a BIG deal.\u00a0 One year I gave up cheese.\u00a0 Seriously, hardest 40 days ever.\u00a0 This year I had several things I desperately wanted to do to honor Christ and the sacrifice he made to save us all.<\/p>\n
Remember my earlier post about being more intentional in my life?\u00a0 The first Lent discipline I could think of to honor that desire was to give up Facebook.\u00a0 Facebook is not a priority in my life, but it is something I do all the time, without thinking.\u00a0 When I’m waiting for a meeting to start, I check FB, when I’m waiting for Reed to finish eating breakfast I check FB, when I’m riding in the car I check FB (riding, not driving!).\u00a0 I realized how often I check it, and I don’t even really care about it.\u00a0 Seemed like a very obvious distraction that I should forgo for these 40 days.\u00a0 What have I learned?\u00a0 I really don’t need FB!\u00a0 I honestly don’t miss it at all.\u00a0 Will I get back on once Easter comes, sure.\u00a0 Will I incessently check it? Nope.\u00a0 It is amazing how easy it is to give up Facebook.\u00a0 Do you find yourself checking it all the time just to fill an empty moment?\u00a0 I encourage you to put it away.\u00a0 Look out the window instead.\u00a0 Or talk to your kids more.\u00a0 (Or do some work! :))<\/p>\n
The second thing I did for Lent was give up sugar.\u00a0 That’s right.\u00a0 ALL sugar.\u00a0 Including high fructose corn syrup, etc.\u00a0 Why sugar?\u00a0 Because I absolutely LOVE it.\u00a0 )I also have lots of baby weight I need to lose and I figured this would help).\u00a0 I have been dreaming of sugar even before Lent started because I was nervous to give it up.\u00a0 I ate my weight in birthday cake (mine and Reed’s birthdays were right before Ash Wednesday) because I was so nervous about giving it up.\u00a0 How am I doing now that Easter is getting close?\u00a0 Do I still miss it?\u00a0 You better believe it!!\u00a0 I dream about sugar.\u00a0 I also dream about the shame I would feel if I forgot and accidentally ate some.\u00a0 That gives me nightmares.\u00a0 Am I already planning what I will eat first?\u00a0 You bet!\u00a0 I c-a-n-n-o-t wait until Easter morning when I can eat some sweets!!\u00a0<\/p>\n
The final thing I committed to do for Lent is read a 40 day devotional called ’24 Hours that changed the World’.\u00a0 It has been fantastic.\u00a0 It has grounded me every single day and reminded me why I am denying myself these human pleasures.\u00a0 It is to honor and remember what Christ did in those last 24 hours of his life.\u00a0 I highly recommend this devotional if you are looking for one.\u00a0 It is appropriate for any time of year, not just during Lent.<\/p>\n
There you have it.\u00a0 My heart on a platter.\u00a0 Hope you enjoyed \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lent is a very important season in my life.\u00a0 I did not grow up ‘giving something up for Lent’.\u00a0 That is traditionally a Catholic practice and I was raised both Methodist and Presbyterian.\u00a0 To be honest when I was little we spent most Easter weekends at the lake and didn’t even go to church.\u00a0 We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-julie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1410"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1433,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1410\/revisions\/1433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.randybaldwin.com\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}