Leaving Myself Alone

Lent begins and I'm all out of sorts.
Maybe this is how it's supposed to be.

In the days between my return from Thailand and Ash Wednesday, things were great.  Easiest jet lag recovery I can remember.  All the adjustments, including the food thing, were going so well.  Except the food thing got a bit out of hand, to be honest, because, well, rice.  It's a bit of a 'thing' each time for me to come home and convince my body it doesn't need all those carbs.

But there was a deep sense of contentment, despite the hard goodbyes.  And I easily, joyfully pressed into the work before me, realizing how much I enjoy the rhythms of my life these days.  Feeling like some brutal reorientations required of me in these past 18 months had finally, truly come into alignment with who I am and what I do now.

And I ate more or less whatever I wanted.

And then Lent.

I'm a "skipped-a-generation" Lent observer, having been raised in a church tradition that shunned anything that seemed too ritualistic.  There were good reasons for that at the time.  And there have been good reasons for many of us to return to the older spiritual formation practices, many of which involve seasons of the Christian calendar.

I 'dabbled' in Lent at the beginning.  Experimented with various ways of 'fasting', some that involved food and some that did not.  It was an entry level sort of thing, those first years.  And, for me, the not-involving-food thing was actually a way of avoiding dealing with a sugar addiction.  Something to the tune of  'don't mess with my sweets and no one gets hurt'.

But a few years into it I realized that there was something important for me in the bodily experience of going without something I really, really wanted to eat.   I.e. sugar.  That's where I felt it the most.  The denial.

By last year I had trained up to a serious 40-day eating program that pushed me to the limits of what I could do safely.  And it hurt.  Not just physically.  But in all the deep kinds of soul-work ways it's supposed to.

I'm doing it again this year.

And I'm all out of sorts.  Again.
And maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.

I don't like it very much.

I don't like the way the practice of fasting uncovers other appetites.  All the ways my 'self' clamours for what it wants.  All the ways I am entrenched in white, first-world entitlement and convenience.
During a time of self-denial, I'm easily frustrated, quick to lose patience, prone to self-pity.  I cry easily.  Brutal reorientations resurface.  I feel sad again about old sorrows.

I am unfocused and unproductive and grumpy.

Lovely.

What happened to that better me?
That one who came home from Thailand all full of confidence and Vitamin D and the deep assurance that my calling was sure?

I flop around untethered, a stranger to myself.

And I think this is what Lent is supposed to do.
Unmasked,
I am humbled.
Again.

By now I know that the thing to do is NOT wallow in the muck of these unsightly revelations.  No.  That would be a highly unfortunately misuse of the Lenten practice.
No wallowing, thank you.
This is all about the grace of Jesus, after all.

So instead, I come fumbling forward,
to stand in His embrace.
And for as long as it takes,
just breathe in His grace.

And when I'm ready,
there's that shockingly gentle reordering of things.
Forgiveness.
Cleansing.
Renewal.
All leading to that not-yet Resurrection.

And in this there's a mystic sense
of leaving myself alone.

Not as in ignoring self-care.
Not as in ignoring honest self-awareness.
No, not that.

But in honestly laying everything down
again,
shushing the little child of self,
the one that wants all the attention,
and turns that into worries of being unimportant or forgotten
and turns those worries into the greedy strivings
that are all so unnecessary.

I watch as it happens again.
How the leaving of my self alone
allows Him to bring out the best self of me
Unleashed and soaring into a newness of life
only brought about by the little deaths of denial
reflecting the Ultimate Death
and the Ultimate Resurrection.

Lent is helping to sort out
my out of sorts self.

And I'm pretty sure that's the way it's supposed to be.