Lent Sucks

So, it is Lent. As always, during Lent as during all seasons, I set lofty goals for myself. I have decided to fast, which I hate, but we had a very compelling discussion in Bible study on Fat Tuesday that reminded me why it is so important. I hate fasting. But then I thought out this beautiful plan because, here is the thing of the thing. I feel like I have always had the whole "Jesus died a horrible death on the cross to take away your sins" thing shoved down my throat my entire life, to the point where the whole thing has become basically meaningless. I mean, not the whole Christian thing, but pretty much the whole cross thing. So, I had this great idea where I would totally plagiarize from Wallace Stevens "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and do Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Cross. I would write beautiful, poetic posts and gain beautiful, poetic insights and grow in my faith and unicorns would prance around the back yard and I would poop rainbows. But, let's just get realistic for a second.

I hate Lent. We're only two weeks into it, and I can say with confidence that all the shine of the transcendent solemnity of Ash Wednesday is dead in the water, buried, forgotten. I am sick of the Lenten feeling, of being broken open, of fragility, like raging case of PMS fragility, where I might start tearing up because of an especially touching Visa commercial. I am sick of knowing about my sin all the time. I KNOW about it now, ALL the time, it comes to mind without me having to try especially hard. I can realize actually IN the moment, "Shannon, you are being a disgusting human being right now." And the crazy part is, I ask for this! I ask to see myself more clearly, because I get so comfortable in my "Well, I've never killed anyone" morality, and I want to know truth, about myself, about who I am and what I've done. But it's really yucky. I get cranky when I'm cold or hungry or when my eye is STILL irritating me even after I've been to the optometrist and been forced to wear my glasses for weeks on end and switched to more expensive contacts. And I get lonely and grumpy and fed up and it doesn't take long and it doesn't take much exterior aggravation. It's strangely like these feelings were always there and it just takes a little bump in the road, a little scratch on the surface for them to all come spilling out. Like fasting. You can skip one meal and all of a sudden you go from being Mother Teresa to being Attila the Hun. One unmet need. One aggravating circumstance. Stupid fasting. Stupid Lent. Stupid eye. Stupid everything.

But, when I do eat, when I patch myself up enough to think straight, I know for sure that this is the point. The point is that, left to our own devices, left to our own well-fed, blind self-satisfaction, we are dead in the water. We are only as good as we are comfortable. And it is all there, lurking beneath the surface. We are kidding ourselves when we esteem ourselves to be "good people." The only way to get past this, to find grace, is to slog through the sewer of our own wretchedness, to be broken open, to become fragile, to be driven crazy enough that looking for healing becomes not only sensible, but necessary. Maybe illumination will eventually come, maybe not. Maybe the illumination is just to have to sit and wallow for 40 days in my own selfishness, to know that God loves me enough to die for me, even if I am the person who was going to rip someone's face off because they didn't sufficiently appreciate to beautiful, artistic nature of Edward Scissorhands, the person who can't be exposed to other human beings when she doesn't eat for 9 hours, the person who still gets jealous as a teenager when all the guys are asking another girl to dance.

I'll make it through. I doubt it will be much fun, but I believe that it will ultimately take me, if not somewhere pleasant, then somewhere True.

S.