Lent is a Catholic thing. I’m not Catholic.
The basic idea of Lent is a 40 day fast. Giving up something that you can live without, but don’t really want to.
Interestingly enough, I was first introduced to the idea of Lent in a First Baptist Church. My friend Adam, (not Henri) was talking about Lent one day and talked about how he was going to give up Soda. Then I happened to be at work, and heard another co-worker (who IS Catholic) talk about how she had given up sugar.
Woah. That was a crazy idea. I figured I could do something like that. After all, how long could 40 days really be? And wasn’t “fasting” supposed to be spiritual or something?
So the first year I decided to give up Soda and Fried Foods. I wish I could say that the experience was life changing, but it wasn’t really. I didn’t feel any more spiritual than when I started. I didn’t think much about what I was doing. I was just giving up soda after all. I’d tried to give up soda before, but I found my willpower was less than desired.
Somehow, I made it all forty days without a soda. So did my friend Adam (though he had a slight slip up at an ice cream shop.)
I suppose the most interesting thing about it was that at the end of my forty days, I found that my craving for all things Coca-Cola related seemed to be much easier to resist. I thought that was interesting.
So the next year I gave up Soda again (as it has become a lent tradition for me) fried foods AND chocolate. That year was a little harder. The next year, I gave up TV, (which was hard on my roommates) but afterward really made me learn to loathe the vulgarity I used to be so alright with. (Consequently, I found a T-Shirt on the clearance rack at American Eagle that says: Kill your TV. I bought it immediately and still wear it with pride. I may take it on the race, I haven’t decided yet.)
The following year, I started running out of things to give up, and because of all the time I had been spending in Third World countries (I’d spent two months in Bolivia without TV, Videogames, and even without good coffee) I learned how to exist without. So I gave up my iPod. Yeah, nothing big.
I tried to pass this idea along to others, and there have been very few takers. After the years of “going without” for only 40 days, I tried to tell others how good it was for them to give something up. After all, didn’t Jesus give up food for forty days in the wilderness? Didn’t He give up his life for us on the cross?
I think maybe I was trying to identify with Christ. I was attempting to “experience” a little bit of what I feel like Christ gave up for us.
How incredibly foolish of me. How can we identify with God? Isn’t the whole sin issue BECAUSE we don’t know how to identify with God?
Jesus came to identify with us. To teach us how to live. To teach us how to love. To teach us how to overcome the desires of our flesh so we no longer are slaves to sin. So needless to say, after years of giving stuff up, I realized, it was just stuff, and it had nothing to do with attempting to become like Christ.
So this year, I asked God what I should give up, because I didn’t want it to be about me anymore. I want it to really be about giving up something that I REALLY loved, something that would be really HARD to give up, because I WANT to want GOD more than I want whatever it is that I give up.
That’s a lot of Want.
Needless to say, God didn’t answer me at first. Then one day I was obsessing over the idea of a pizza with my brother, and clear as a bell God says: “I want you to give up Pizza for Lent.”
I nearly croaked. Pizza is MY food. I swear I would have invented it if I had been born at the correct era. But I asked for it, didn’t I? So I’ll be giving up Pizza this year for lent. Starting February 17th, I’ll be giving up Pizza until Easter. Sigh.
So why this blog here? Well, I am basically going to throw this out there. Would you like to do this with me? I figure, this could potentially be a decent team building exercise that we can do away from each other, and it will end before Training Camp, so we can all indulge while we’re there (if we get to indulge, that is) and talk about the struggle and how we overcame our cravings. I think it’s good to deny the flesh. I think we’ll be doing a LOT of that on the Race. So why not practice a bit?
So there it is. I’m planning on giving up Pizza. Is there anything you might be willing to give up for a season? I can’t promise any special blessings from God, or anything other than some intense sudden cravings. But I can promise that you’ll probably hate me at some point for putting this challenge out there.
It’s ok, I can take it.
Let me know what you think, fellow racers! God bless you regardless! (Leave me a comment to tell me what you decide to give up!! )
