I celebrated Lent as usual this year. I started celebrating Lent when I was 12 & haven't missed a year since (19 years I've been doing this now! 19!!), but for the years that I was still in my parents' house, it was very hush-hush. You see, my parents are not Catholic, they don't belong to a high church, and therefore they are not into hearing about stuff that seems "Catholic" to them. It freaked them out that I had so many Catholic friends, truth be told. So, I kept Lent a secret from my family when I was a teenager. And then from pretty much everyone (except Keely, since we spent too much time together for her to not notice) when I was an aim student.
But never mind me; let's talk about everyone else. In the past few years, I've heard (or seen, for those that I communicate with only via internet) many friends and acquaintances talking about Lent. Apparently, everyone is doing it all of a sudden. Or, we've just all decided to come out of hiding at once.
So, it was cool to know that there were others doing this at the same time as me. It was amusing to see so many people post their Lenten fasts on Facebook; to me, that does miss one of the finer points of fasting by quite a large margin.
As for me, I struggled. And I think that's how it should be; after all, what's the point of an "easy" sacrifice? I don't think I'm setting the bar too high for myself; I do think that my self-control and self-discipline are not what they once were. And it would seem that devoting something to God is not enough of a motivator.
Good thing we have Jesus.
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