A New Bent on Lent

This coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 68th Lenten season of my life. Actually, it’s more like about the 60th Lenten season if you count from when I really knew what Lent was.

Over the years, I have “given up” many different things for Lent. There was the classic sweets, soda, and snacks in my earlier years. As I got older and more creative, I gave up things like listening to the radio when I was driving.  One year, I gave up mascara and endured inquiries from people as to the state of my health. I’d get a lot of “Are you ok, you look tired.” Or “Are you sick?” Come Easter morning, when I could once again pull out the Maybelline wand, I resembled Tammy Faye Baker. I couldn’t get enough.

Now, when I ponder just how I want to make these weeks of Lent more meaningful, I tend to gravitate more to what I can DO and not what I can give up. I ask myself what habit, what way of thinking or acting would be difficult for me to change but really doesn’t serve me or anyone around me well. What keeps me from living, loving and being the person God wants me to be. The person I was born and gifted to be. If I can sacrifice my old ways and practice a new way during Lent, maybe the new way will become a habit. They say it takes 21 days to form a new habit. That gives me plenty of time.

This year, I have discerned that I need to work on what comes out of my mouth. Which means I need to work on storing up goodness in my heart because according to the Gospel of Luke,”A good person brings good things out of the good stored up in their heart, and an evil person brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”    (Luke 6:45)

If we want our words to be gentle, encouraging, edifying and kind they need to come from a heart full of goodness. How do we build the store of goodness in our hearts? I think it starts with recognizing the goodness around us every day. Look at the world through a lens of awe and gratitude. Store those moments of raw goodness not only in your memory but in your heart. Give them a permanent place in your heart.

In order to recognize goodness, we have to be open to it.  Often, I am so fixated on some perceived hurt or injustice in my life that I don’t see the goodness happening in other parts of my life. I miss out on the opportunity to store up that goodness in my heart. As a result of that single focus, my heart is full of anything but goodness and my mouth speaks the same.

This Lent I’m hoping to cultivate a habit of seeing the goodness around me every day and storing that goodness in my heart, so when I speak, my words come from what my heart is full of. Then, I can be sure my words will land softly and leave nothing negative in their wake.

That is a habit I would like to cultivate in this 60th Lenten season of my life. What is a habit you would like to cultivate? It’s never too late.

Joan