D+

So far, I think I have a D+ in Lent. Even maybe a D-, if you count the fact that I started a blog on my Lenten Journey, and have failed to enter anything for 4 days. I was so psyched on Shrove Tuesday.......and so enthusiastically following a period of reflection, self sacrifice, and all......and I really only lasted one day! What does that say about me....???? I even skipped church on Sunday, because I was too hungover from my husband's 60th birthday party to navigate my way into slight snow. It looked so pretty from my bed.........I felt enormous peace (despite the hangover); and I wondered, at 10:00, when the church bells would ring, if I was really somehow in the Greater Doghouse.

My husband's chocolate cake further has led me astray, it is the best I have ever seen....ever had.....Frangelico Mousse with butter cream frosting. And, it was his birthday. Yikes! i find myself so preoccupied with the things I am not doing for Lent, that I may actually have missed the real deal. I have not gone hungry, even for 4 hours without succumbing to 1/3 of a package of Starbucks almonds. I have missed Church services exactly once. I have drank excessively at a birthday celebration. I stayed in my pajama's for half a day. I gossiped once at work this week. I am lost......I am not doing "Wilderness" well. What gives? Am I going to live for another 36 days saying "Tomorrow is the day?" Why am I publicly humiliating myself?

All of my burning questions fall on real ears.....

I have read the bible in the morning and at night, and my most favorite mediation from Prayers for Healing is as follows:

Dewdrop, let me cleanse
in your brief
sweet waters
These dark hands of life

---Basho

Today, that is all I can hope for. I hope to be cleansed from my iniquities, and that God has a sense of humor and laughs at my fruitless attempts of being perfect during Lent. I also pray that I will realize that, it is not so much about sacrifice as it is about making room, as I said in my 1st entry. Filling up the body and soul with stuff (like cake and wine and fun!), leaves little room for grace. I am going to try, very hard, to make that space......I have no idea how.....but I do know tomorrow is another day, and I start afresh.

Stay with me followers, if there are any....we will figure this out!