I'm having a baby in 20-some days, so a food fast isn't especially practical this year.
It's been difficult to choose something to give up for the 40 days (minus Sundays - which are feast days) before Easter that would be both sacrificial and practical for the place God has put me.
I've decided to tackle a couple of the things that I struggle with the most - pride, procrastination, and prayer.
In order to be a more productive steward of the time God has given me, and to squelch some of the narcissism I indulge in, I've decided to give up a few specific websites:
I check all of these daily for no good reason. I could justify it by saying that checking progress on my blogging and income earning goals keeps me motivated to write more and stay focused, but the reality is that I will have earned the same amount and attracted the same number of readers whether I know the numbers or not. I will probably still allow myself to check them on Sunday, but Sunday is generally the day I am no where near a computer, so we'll see.
My hope is that this will free up some of my time spent online for time spent in prayer - I am thinking about staying with my son in his room when I put him down for a nap so that I can pray for a while before coming back into the living room where there are distractions.
Are you observing Lent? What are you doing? Kitchen Stewardship has ideas here.
2 comments:
Ooh, those are hard. I can't imagine what a difference it will make in 40 days though - I am a complete stat checker so I know just how much time it wastes. Good luck with all of these!
I relate to your stat-checking! I have a hard time leaving alone any features that allow me to check things like that.
A few years ago I found myself talking and complaining a lot about my Lenten fast--you know, kind of showing off my suffering, just like Jesus told us not to!--so now I avoid discussing my fast while I'm doing it, but if I learn things I think are worth sharing then I write about it after Easter. This year I wrote an Ash Wednesday article about fasting to help the environment, which has been so effective for me in learning to take better care of God's Creation.
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