Lenten Meditations

Lent is roughly half over, so that makes this post about three weeks out of date. I'm not worrying it much however because on this blog anything newer than two years out of date is current.

In my local church community of LGBC, the church's Easter traditions are valued highly and usually looked forward to with much anticipation. Peep Jousting may not be Canonical, but it is followed with great enthusiasm around here. I was extremely surprised last year when the wearing of ashes on Ash Wednesday caused many conversations at work and throughout the day. The few people who even new of the event, once they had been reminded, were confused about a "Protestant" taking part in a "Catholic" tradition. I guess my "back woods Bible belt" home town was more advanced theologically through its Ministerial Alliance than I had believed. This Alliance was a regular meeting of several Pastors, Ministers, Fathers, etc... from the local area that included Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Episcopalian, and Non Denominational. These leaders actively tried to bring their congregations together especially in the celebrations around Lent.

Anyway, fast forward to today. Many things are different this year, mostly because this Easter I'm married! I spent some time before Lent considering what I should give up only to focus on things that seemed rather meaningless to me this year. However, on Ash Wednesday, my thoughts were suddenly drawn to an issue in a way that I had never seen it before. In the course of about three days I was repeatedly made aware of how selfish I was with my time.

I am embarrassed to share this but I am working desperately to become a man who no longer hides away in shame. That is part of what Lent is about right? The giving up of oneself, the sometimes painful cleaving to God, and facing the ills in oneself that this often reveals. For me, I had been jealously guarding my time for myself. Looking back, I see that it started before I can remember with my family, friendships, work, and God. Deep inside, I viewed those as activities, that once taken care of, I could then move on to myself. I was not able to be present in those times, so I clearly divided those times from the times that I felt safe to be myself... hidden away from the world.

Does anyone see where the act of being married, living together daily in the same space, could be affected by this? Yes, I was a jerk. I tried to be as pleasant about it as I could. After all, I had years of practice "graciously letting" people have "my time." I also had plenty of experience of hiding this understanding from myself, so I felt fully justified and righteous in my actions. I am ashamed to say that I have treated my wife the same way for the first nine months of our marriage. I enjoyed spending time with her, but in the back of my mind, I always had the thought that afterwards I would be able to "rest in my time." I'm not saying that alone time is bad. On the contrary it is fabulous and needed, but my trouble was hanging onto the importance of my alone time so tightly that all else, including my time with Angela became secondary to me, to my neediness. I could not freely enjoy coming home in the evening or spending the weekend together because I was focused on my time and how I would feel in it after I had given the "required time" to her.


So, I am giving up "my time" for Lent, or rather the protective box that "my time" represented. I see the view that I need to give up. I even see part of the pain and self doubt in me that supports this view. My daily prayer to God this lent is that He would reveal within me what replaces this hiding and shame.

Peace to you all. May this Lent be as important to you in drawing closer to God and to each other as it is being for me, but with immensely less pain.
Curran