Lent, fasting, and how I spend my time

I am not good at making commitments to discipline. There is a good reason that the only New Year's resolution I made was to give up all chips for the month of January - it was doable. Not necessarily easy for me (I love chips, they are my comfort food), but I deliberately decided on a resolution that would be only mildly challenging, and I did it.

I have never fasted for Lent, partly because I wasn't sure I could follow through with the commitment to self-discipline required by most typical choices of fasting, and partly because of motive - I didn't really feel called but rather I mostly felt tempted to follow the choices that others whom I respect made to fast, in the hopes that I would somehow become more spiritual if I did it too. Sometimes I was tempted to fast from chocolate or alcohol (or chips) because if I gave them up I might loose weight. But these motives never made me feel like I would really be honoring Jesus, so I reasoned - what was the point?

This year things are different for me. I don't feel any more "spiritual" than before (what would that look like, anyway?), but I am much more serious than I have been for years about trying to spend time praying and journaling daily, and in trying to understand and follow what I think God wants for me. I also am seeking to understand more deeply the experience of Jesus during the time leading up to the Crucifixion, and it seems appropriate to me this year to be more conscious of my experience of Lent.

So when I read about Lisa and Will Samson's decision to give up blogging for Lent (and in searching for those links I stumbled on the fact that another favorite blogger of mine, Katy McKenna, is also blog-fasting for Lent), something really struck a chord in me. I thought at first that this was just another case of "oh - aren't they spiritual? I'd like to be like that, to do that too!"; but after thinking and praying for a few days about this, I have decided that I feel called to this same action. Blogging has been a wonderful blessing to me over the last few years (even though I am only a sporadic blog writer), but I also struggle with an ongoing tendency to use my blog reading as a "numbing agent" - it's all too easy for me to spend hours at a time reading blogs, when I know I should be doing other things.

At this point, I think that it is a good choice for me to face myself during those times when I want to "numb out", and see if I can chose to use my time differently. I am going to attempt to spend some time daily in creative expression (something I have felt a call to), as well as make a stronger commitment to my attempts at daily prayer and journaling.

We have been on a family vacation for the past few days, away from the Internet. My decision to fast from blogging was about 90% made during that time (I know - Lent started on Wednesday, I'm coming to my decision a little late!). Today, as I fired up my computer for the first time after a few days, I started to look through my feed reader at all the blog posts I have missed over the last few days, and the familiar draw to escape by reading starting tugging at me and I didn't like that feeling. I think now is a window of opportunity for me to learn something that I need to walk through.

I'm still not sure I've got the best motivation, but that's OK too. I'm just going to try. So I'm going to turn off my feed reader and not start it up until after Easter. I will be checking email, but I'm also committing to not spending more than 1/2 hour at a time on the Internet, except for writing emails when that is called for. I can check some news headlines, but no hours-long forays into web searching or reading of articles. Instead, I plan to try to spend more time being creative, and in my daily commitment to prayer and journaling.

I'll miss you all, a whole bunch. I'll especially miss reading about the many different expressions of faith surrounding Lent and leading up to Easter - that's one of the things that I have loved about blogging, that it has exposed me to so many varying faith traditions and experiences.

I hope you'll leave the light on for me!