After Fat Tuesday

I can't believe that Lent is already here. It's March 2011!!!! Yesterday night, the evening of Fat Tuesday, I started scrambling my thoughts to find things to give up this Lent. I did not resort to google this time, but I did consult lifeteen.com for suggestion. Yes, I still consider myself teenager at heart. Part of me feel like I am afraid to make promises, saying that I will give up facebook, or I will refrain from meat, etc. I am afraid of not being able to keep them or not being able to achieve the ultimate goal of scooching over to be nearer to God's side by doing all that. I am afraid that I will still feel empty when Easter comes and treat the day as just another Sunday. Maybe, in short, I am afraid of failing.

I remember a year ago, I was talking to a friend who happened to be a Christian, and I told him, you know, I just feel far from God. And he looked at me and asked, are you putting in the time to pray or read about Him or do a quiet time? And in embarrassment I had to admit that I did not really. I come to Him at times of need, like Alladin rubbing his genie lamp. I read relevant books to help me reorganize my spiritual life, but those books are not useful just to be read by itself. They have to be treated like cookbooks, filled with direction, and will only be fruitful when I actually and finally get into the kitchen and... cook. In relation to that, I once read about a person's encounter with Mother Teresa. At the meeting, he explained to Mother Teresa how he was in a complicated situation and he did not know how to get out of it or how to handle it. He was hoping that he would get enlightened by the suggestions from this little saintly woman with wrinkles of wisdom. So at the end of his lengthy story, he asked, "What should I do?" Mother Theresa only said a sentence to him: Pray an hour a day, and you will be fine. In other words, we should just implement what is said to be the "Philosophy of Showering". You don't think about how, you don't consult on the methodology, you don't try to find the Hebrew word for "shower", you don't ponder about warm or cold water, or calculate the angle of water drops, or think about how you would feel after the shower. All you know is that there's water and you bathe. The more you wait, the more you stink. The more you stink, the more depressed you get.

So, I think about that and I think about how promises work. Let's say you get married and in front of God, the pastor and all loved ones, you say: "I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life". As you say that, you truthfully know that it is just NOT possible, right? "To be true to you" means you do not lie or hold grudge, and "to love and honor you" means you will not be disrespectful or hide anything or do any sin to you spouse. "All the days of my life"...... we all should have cold feet before going to the altar. Impossible, but we say it anyway. Or when you decide to have a child. Conscious or not, we make a promise of raising him/her, providing shelter, education, moral support, and all that. You enter the labor room at 26 years old and come out with a baby. Do you know that you can actually fulfill all those things? Not really, but we have children anyways. The point is, I think, that's just how human promises work. It does not mean that we will perfectly abide and deliver that promises that we state, but we give our commitment to come back to them every time we falter. If I slipped and left my spouse in sickness, I will come back the next day and try again. If my son ended up doing drugs, well, I'm not sure what to do, but perhaps work more to improve my parenting? It works differently from they way God promises us things, where they definitely will happen. When we promise, I don't think it is in our power and nature to ensure it will always be fulfilled, but we are committed towards what we say. That, we can do.

Having thought all that, I feel better facing this Lent. And it's probably not good either to be so afraid of failing that I would not even promise at all. That's like failing before I even start. So, back to the ultimate question: what am I giving up this season? Hmm... good question... I am promising (still feels the shudders using this word) to be discipline. Very vague, I know. But for starters, that means:

1. Not pressing the snooze button in the morning.

2. Refraining from facebook.

Through my journey with that I will add more based on the success rate. And I realize that it will not be a personal achievement when in the end I am able to control myself, because ultimately the beautiful achievement is only when I am closer to God and celebrate Easter with all my heart.

Alrighty, gotta go get my ashes and go shower after that!

To all who are celebrating, happy Ash Wednesday. Through successes and failures, we pray for each other and we lean on Him.