Season of Lent

It is that time again, the season of lent where abstinence, abstention, abstemiousness, and asceticism are the words one associates with this season of Ash Wendesday, Good Friday, and finally Easter. It is, unlike the Christmas season, a more somber time despite it occurring in spring. As a Catholic we are told to give something up for the season of Lent. And each year I ponder what one thing I can forgo as a way to show my devotion. For a girlfriend, it was food. Of course she was being funny, but also a bit serious since like most women, dieting was as much a way of life as breathing despite her enviable figure.

As a child I would make sure to give up things that weren't going to be missed. I didn't understand how one's piety had to do with suffering. I hadn't learned about the Catholic tradition of flagellation and deprivation since my Catholicism was about faith and love. I guess this is all a way for me to say that I never really practiced Lent all that seriously.

But this year for some odd reason, I am considering this ritual a bit more closely. Lord knows I have so many vices that would be difficult, if not impossible to give up. The first vice is my habit, my absolute love for all profane words, particularly the F word. It's funny, despite being a word person I still view four letter words as somehow so perfect in all of their vulgarity and aggression. Sadly, it is an adolescent rebellion I have not outgrown, much to my mother's dismay. Then there is the love for wines. Hmm. Since becoming a mother, a healthy dose of drinking is required to get through a day, if not a week. Giving up drinking might end with me in sanitorium, perhaps permanently since life would feel so much more sane inside the loony bin than outside with a small child and no booze.

If I wanted to be kind to my spouse, I might forgo shopping for this season of abstention. But then there is the spring season with all of the shoes and hand bags in jewel tones to make that consideration absurd. But since my shopping is not limited to clothes and accessories, well, where would one start? Books? Surely God doesn't have such grandiose expectations for his flawed and human flock, right? Needlepoint? Well, let's not take away the one thing that can quell my ever-churning mind. Forgoing this obsession might mean my husband and child may need a Mommy break of the permanent variety. Food? We all know I'm the last person who can afford to not eat. Music? Magazines? Where do I start to come up with something of the purchasable variety that would be appropriate to give up in the name of my devotion?

See how impossible all of this is for a person with my particular peculiarities? It is a challenge since so many of my vices stem from the neuroses of being me. Doesn't Lent mean more than simply giving something up? Or am I missing the point? That's not too hard to imagine since I was not a diligent student in my CCD classes, the ones I attended and didn't blow off to sit in the nearby Roy Rogers with my other lapsed Catholic friends. So, I will ruminate, rule out, consider and reconsider all of the options available to me for this season of Lent. And since I seem to do most things at a blistering pace, anything that involves serious thought and consideration, I might just come up with the appropriate thing, item, to forgo just in time before Lent is officially over.