Si-LENT-s

Although I'm not Catholic and have no desire for "high church," I do have many non-Catholic friends who regularly observe Lent. I'd thought about it for the last several years but have always felt that I ought to be sacrificial all year round and didn't like the idea of allowing myself to believe that my work was done at Easter. That's not to say that Lent observers feel or think this way, but only that I would be tempted to if I wasn't careful. Along the same lines, however, I have had a difficult time adjusting to my new grown-up single life in the past 8 months, and my spiritual life has taken a real beating. So this year, after some really hard conversations with good friends, I realized that a scheduled sacrifice to recenter my focus might be just what I needed.

Then came the internal conflict about what to give up. It had to be something tangible that I could feel and experience and miss regularly. It also had to be something I could actually do without for forty days. And it had to be something that would help me find and feel God again.

Finally, after a really late night of tears and trying and trembling, it came to me on my way home. I decided to give up listening to the radio in my car. It met all the criteria. With all of my driving back and forth to Beebe at least twice a week, in addition to the driving that I do around Searcy regularly, I could definitely miss it. But I also felt that I had enough self-control to make it through. I also decided that because I didn't want to sweep my house clean only to have seven more demons return, I needed to pray regularly in the car to replace listening to music. This was how I was going to find God again.

Now comes the confession and report on just how well I've done. First of all, I did stick to it. (And since my revelation came about a week too late to begin on Ash Wednesday, I've still got 3 days left.) Some car rides were harder than others, and I didn't always pray as much as I should. But practicing the self-discipline of Silence has really helped. It's helped me be more self-controlled about my eating habits and more self-disciplined about working out. It's helped me to really appreciate and almost look forward to the quiet times when I can just rest and think. I think it's helped me remember more. When I have more room and time to think, I forget fewer things. But the ultimate test is "Has it really brought me closer to my God?" I really think it has. I think the prayer and quiet time has created a way of life for me that reminds me that God is around. I am much more likely to remember to stop and pray than I was at the first of the year. I'm more content (usually). I'm more comfortable being alone and silent (most of the time).

I don't know what will change next week when I'm allowed to listen to the radio again. I hope it's like when I stopped drinking Cokes for a year and a half. Now I can't stand the taste of a regular soft drink. I hope I won't like it anymore. I hope I at least don't want it on all the time. I hope I'll still be able to remember how precious quiet can be and how calming it can be to not have a thousand different inputs in my one tiny brain.

Regardless, God is good. And I can't explain how it wonderful feels to regularly feel Him with me again. So, if the testimony of a Lent neophyte is worth anything, I'm in favor of yearly sacrifice. It's one step closer to the daily sacrifice we're all called to.

"Sometimes it's sweet, and Sometimes it's sour."

I've been debating starting a new blog since my old one lost its funding back in August, but I was pretty self-conscious about it and unsure about how much I really had to say and how much time I had to say it. I don't want to steal Ellen's blog insecurity bit, though, so this is me moving on.

You're probably all wondering what in the world "life is like a pickle" means exactly. Of course, life is like a box of chocolates, but a pickle? Well, I'm glad you asked. The title is actually pretty appropriate in that it may be one of the first legitimately intelligent things I ever wrote. (If you're astute enough to hear a story coming, you should get used to it because, after all, there is a story for everything. There's even a story about how there's a story for everything. But this is not the time for that.)

When I was 8 years old, I wrote what I will call, for the purpose of this story, an "essay" entitled "Life is like a Pickle: Sometimes it's sweet, and sometimes it's sour." I can't reproduce the rest of it here, but it went on to talk about church and how attending church and being a part of God's people will make your life sweet and not sour. The section that is my personal favorite, after reading it again as a semi-adult, quotes verbatim an evangelism tract that has been in the foyer at Beebe Church of Christ since the Apostle Paul was knee-high to a grasshopper. Something along the lines of being "In the Lord's house, with the Lord's people, on the Lord's day." Oh, yeah. All of you BBCofCers know exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, I don't remember writing this brilliance at all, but apparently my daddy was so proud of it that he showed everybody at church and copies were made and distributed.

So, needless to say, I've been "wordy" for as long as anyone can remember. I like words as more than a friend. It's a love affair that has molded and shaped my life for nearly 22 years now, and I'm currently trying my hardest to make a career out of it.

This blog will mostly be a way for me to indulge my love of language and my incredible self-interest while occasionally (hopefully) fulfilling the needs of my first love language. I hope that all of you in blog-reading-dom enjoy it at least enough to keep coming back because, after all, regardless of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I'm never writing just for myself.