Thursday, March 3, 2016

Halfway through Lent

So we're twenty days out of forty into Lent. (Technically twenty three out of forty-six if you're counting Sundays). So what's the verdict?

The past three weeks have definitely been an incredible experience and journey for me and I spent a lot of that time basking in the Lord's presence and generally enjoying a beautiful and fruitful time. They say that getting to the halfway point is the hardest part of the journey, and that once you're halfway you're basically home free.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really seem to be the case with Lent. At least, it doesn't seem the case for me, for Lent. This is a difficult season... it's a season of repentance, of growth, of discipline, of weeding out old habits and beginning the process of separating yourself from things that are holding you down from your relationship with God. Although that sounds pleasant and wonderful, when you actually get to the humanity level of it, and you see someone like me, you realize it's a lot more painful and a lot more difficult than what may be depicted.

This is a time when we realize that that thirst, that yearning, that we feel in our daily lives can only be satisfied by God. It's a time of saying goodbye to ourselves and realizing that we can't actually do all that much on our own, and that ultimately our ego has to go if we truly want to live. Because only Christ can give life, and only Christ can satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts at those times when we are even too scared to look at ourselves, in our heart of hearts, and see what might be there.

Although I am thankful and relish this incredible time of consolation and comfort from God, I know it cannot last - and the painful process of ridding yourself of poison (with His help) and cleaning those battle wounds? - that has just begun. And it's a journey I am glad to have started, but it's a journey and a process I know will not stop when Lent ends later this month. It's a process that must be committed to, that must be chosen, that must be endured.

Honestly, I have broken all of my Lenten promises at least once since Ash Wednesday, and we just reached the halfway point. As amazing as it would have been to go all forty days keeping those promises and those commitments, and how great bragging rights I can get or whatever if I kept those; I sit here, writing this blog post, and have realized in this process how thankful I am to have actually broken all these 'Lenten promises'. I'm not saying that the commitments and promises meant nothing to me, and I did indeed try my very hardest with them, but what would surviving forty days without internet on my phone have gotten me? What would serving forty days without complaining gotten me? I would have grown in a lot of virtue and probably have been a lot more productive with my time away from home. But looking back now, perhaps breaking these promises taught an even more important lesson to me this Lent, one that perhaps God wanted to teach me more sitting in my current spot in life: that WE'RE NOT PERFECT.

But God is. We can try all we want, but the very fact of the matter is that we can't be perfect. We aim to be perfect, but we're not at the present state. We're not perfect because we don't love God as perfectly as we should. God makes us perfect. God completes us. And only with God and His assistance can we become perfect.

We all try too hard to figure it all out on our own. We want to solve our own problems, we want to think that we don't need to rely on other people. While that's very admirable, there are and will be times in our lives when that simply won't be feasible - there will come a time when we realize that we really can't do it all on our own, no matter how much we don't like to say or hear that fact. I truly believe that God is allowing this period of desolation for me because I need to learn precisely that: I have become too comfortable in doing things by myself and have become too reliant on myself to the point where that can become prideful. And pride is the man's ultimate undoing. It is the root of sin and it is the root of everything that is wrong in this world. Love has no room for pride. I am standing here, in this place in my life - physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, relationally - because of the grace of God and through hundreds of thousands of others souls' influences, whether they be positive, negative, or anything in between.

So although I have been experiencing a lot of pain and suffering the past couple days, I am ready for all that this Holy Lent has to offer me and I am ready for all else that God is trying to speak to me this Lent, and through the rest of my life. We grow in desolation, and although this time, this healing and growing time, is difficult, it is the only way to grow stronger and blossom into all that God is calling us to be.

So fight on, brothers and sisters. Pray for me.

Pax semper vobiscum.

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