Don't Choose a Counterproductive Penance
Lenten considerations for women.
Dear Friends,
I don’t know quite how to introduce this piece; suffice it to say that I’ve learned a thing or two over the past couple of decades through my fumbling failures at observing Lent in a rightly-ordered manner.
If you are a believer, do you also struggle with this sort of thing sometimes? Do you want to focus on the Cross through healthy self-denial but find that it ends up getting a bit twisted around?
Take a look:
“The Best Lenten Sacrifices Are the Realistic Ones.”
Have you found your Lenten groove over the years? What are your plans for Lent this year?
What do you think about differences in what women (especially in the childbearing/young child rearing years) and men may need in this area?
Finally, thank you to all our new paid subscribers who signed up after this Book Notes post. We are so delighted to have you!
Have a blessed week!
I love this. I fretted about ash Wednesday fasting once because I had a kid who might be weaning? But maybe wasn't? And I was like, I know I shouldn't fast if I'm nursing but I don't know if I'm nursing. I asked a priest, which maybe didn't make a whole lot of sense, and he told me that my baby shouldn't fast. And a friend pointed out that my baby deserves both nutrition and comfort/bonding (and I need to avoid mastitis) so don't try to calculate like this. // We are hopefully wrapping up two weeks of double-whammy norovirus (the one where you get sick twice, five days apart), and in the middle of it we had a really scary ER visit (which turned out to be fine but only after 8 disruptive hours). We're doing the minimum the church asks of us for this week. I decided I'm going to start my own Lenten things a week or two "late" because I need to recover physically and emotionally, and get some semblance of a routine back, before adding a new thing to the routine.
Random, but in terms of gentle fasting: I once heard of someone who gave up salting their food for Lent- and that idea came up somewhere else recently- so I thought I would share here as a do-able option.
Personally I feel called to take the myriad of vitamins (a regime I avoid bc it’s annoying) that my body could benefit from.