Ash Wednesday (or Lent 1.0)

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to figure out what to do for Lent. There are so many avenues I could take. I could give up buying yarn. Bah. That's really no big deal. The last time I bought yarn was more than 40 days ago, so what's the point of not buying any during Lent? Besides Stitches South occurs before Easter this year so why set myself up to fail? (The true heart of the matter.) Or I could adopt the “40 bags in 40 days” and make it a point to throw out or donate a trash bag of stuff each day. As I considered my clutter and how wonderful it would be to have a completely organized existence in 6 weeks, I decided that in order to "make this work" I would have to purchase smaller trash bags and allow myself to "count" plastic grocery bags. You can see my flawed logic. 

While I was beating myself up trying to think of something...(one little, meaningful thing! chocolate? wine? restaurants? passive aggression? avoidance? snarkiness? bad movies?)...I got an e-mail alert that a fellow church member had just updated his blog, The Accidental Missionary. I didn't ask permission to reprint these last few sentences of his blog, but I'm pretty sure Scott won't mind. 

But it’s so much more than delayed gratification. Lent is a time of pruning. Cutting away the shoots that have grown over time. The ones that clutter, and choke, and prevent healthy growth here on Earth.

So we can feed and care for the branches that really matter.

Wow! And that’s what I’m going to do for Lent. I’m going to prune, feed and care. I’m not going to give up chocolate, or social media, or eating carbs. Each day during Lent I will consciously do something to prune, feed and care for myself….it could be cleaning out a closet, learning something new, thinking kind thoughts--and some days will be harder than others. I’m going to cut out the shoots that don’t matter and nurture the branches that do. Every day. For 40 days. Can I keep it up? 

And knitting counts.

Note: Please take a minute to check out Scott's blog, The Accidental Missionary. Just as Scott claims, he's "a regular guy tryin' to figure it out." It's pretty good stuff!