Easy doesn't do it any more

I have had a lot of conversations about Lent the last few days.  When I left the Catholic Church, the rebellious child in me rejoiced in not feeling obligated to observe Lent. I rejoiced in knowing that my salvation was secure and there was nothing I had to do to keep it that way. There were no longer any religious hoops for me to jump through. And I liked it that way. Then I grew up.

Suddenly my understanding of what it means to be a Christian--to seek to be Christ-like--changed dramatically.  I realized that if I internalized the Gospel so that my everyday life could begin to look like Christ, then I had some eternal obligations that were much greater than those any man or religious institution could impose upon me. The nonconformist in me doesn't have to conform. She has to be transformed. That is so much harder.

Maybe this is why, as an adult, Lent speaks to my heart. The intentionality of sacrifice. A set time in which the giving up aligns with the giving in. A time in which we can work out for ourselves in tangible ways the concept of sacrifice. A concept that goes against my human nature. My humanity seeks the easy. So this year, that is my focus for Lent. I will forsake the easy in my walking around life. I will stop defaulting to the easy outs in my life--foods, conversations, excuses. I will stop looking for corners to cut. In these forty days, I will seek to tear down my little altars to little gods I often unknowingly constructed, so that my life itself becomes a living altar to a Christ who stepped down off the cross to live in me.

This year, I sacrifice the easy. 

In all things, give thanks.

I am grateful. I mean it. Truly, truly grateful. Unfortunately, I forgot it for awhile. And chances are, I will forget it again at some point in the near future. But right now, in this moment, I am grateful.  For the big blessings, beauty in the natural world, the gift of love, all the little things, and even the hard stuff.  This isn't an easy place to get to when you are feeling ungrateful. Sometimes it takes great intention and effort to find gratitude in the everyday. It helps when someone else points it out.

Ann Voskamp writes about the idea of practicing eucharisteo in her book One Thousand Gifts. And the more I listen to people talk--myself included--the more I realize that the practice of giving thanks in our words and actions on a daily basis seems to be absent in our culture. And I have to ask, if we aren't expressing that thankfulness on the outside, do we even feel it at all? Please understand that when I am using the collective WE, I mean specifically, myself. Me. I have spent the past couple of weeks feeling pretty ungrateful. So I started looking for a way out of it and I began to notice that when we don't speak with gratitude, the only other option is a lack of gratitude. Most of what we are privileged to call problems, are nothing more than inconveniences at best. Ask the rest of the world. We've just lost perspective.

It is only in the hard eucharisteo that I am learning once again, to count the smallest things as blessings.  And maybe I need to stop complaining and get a grip. Or a sense of humor. Or remember that I am not the center of the universe. I need to lighten up and look around. I need to be reminded.  And when I feel perspective slipping away, I go spend some time with James and Nicole. There are bigger problems in the world than the barista getting my order wrong. Maybe I just need to learn to thirst again. I think it is probably safe to say that when Jesus called us to take up our cross, He wasn't talking about a grande nonfat caramel macchiato with one splenda.