What I’m giving up for Lent…
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an Anglican, which means, among many other things, that I follow pretty traditional Christian events and seasons, such as Lent. Lent is a time when many Christians decide to give something up as a form or penitence, or devotion. I’ve never been very good at this because in my more self pitying/martyr like moments I feel like I’ve given up my life in order to raise my children – other times when I’m less depressed I realize that I don’t give up anything at Lent because I’m sort of a convenient Christian ie if it’s convenient I’ll do it.
This year, though, I put some thought into it and decided that I’ll actually give something up – I’m going to give up being miserable.
Yup, that’s right. I bet you don’t think that’s much of a sacrifice. After all, most people give up something that is more overtly meaningful or something that makes a statement or teaches something about life and the suffering of Christ and others. Well, let me tell you, this has meaning to me!
I know that most of you are still raising your most challenging children, I’m still raising children with challenges but as you know, the days and nights of living with fear of my life are past. During those years, I believe I developed being miserable to an art form. I could look at my days and the hard, hard moments that filled each 24 hours and I could slip into misery as fast as a heartbeat. I don’t blame myself for that – it’s just the way things developed and the neuronal patterns that were set due to repeated events.
Now, when things go badly, as they do in everyone’s life, I find that I go right to misery – no stops in between, no self monitoring, no consideration of alternative mood states – just jump straight in to miserableness.
No more – I have a couple of things brewing with my young adults that could put me there, and in fact were threatening to do so – but this time I made a choice. In fact, I was watching Downton Abby when this epipheny hit me (I live for Sunday nights – Downton Abbey and The Walking Dead are both on then and they are my favorite shows). Anyhoo, on Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith had just been informed that her young relative and his butler, both soldiers on the front lines in World War 1, had been seen to be shot and were now missing. The character that MS plays then asked if anyone had actually seen their dead bodies, the answer was no, and she determined that the information available wasn’t nearly enough for her to get out her mourning clothes yet. I liked that a lot. Okay, things aren’t so great, but maybe I don’t have to put on my mental mourning clothes yet – maybe I go to that clothes trunk way too soon. Instead, I can just keep on focusing on what doesn’t make me miserable, and know truly in my heart that I have a choice – at least given the information I have at the moment I can choose misery or I can choose to just keep going in good form. I think maybe I just got too used to living in those mourning clothes, I think that being miserable became my norm over the years, but it doesn’t have to be now.
That’s what I’m giving up for Lent. We’ll see how it goes.
Have your best day possible and have a wonder over to my other blogs if you have time.
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