"Small Sacrifices for Lent" (or "Don't Make Lent Into a Fat Tuesday of Devotions")

Last year, I had grand plans for Lent. Fasting! Daily Rosaries! Daily Mass! Weekly Stations of the Cross! All that and no chocolate for anyone!

I managed to fast on the appointed days. I said the Rosary every day for ... a week and a half. I attended daily Mass for about a week, then we all took turns with the flu and didn't leave the house except for groceries for three weeks. We did pray the Stations of the Cross most Fridays, though. And no one had chocolate except on Sundays (Soccer Dad and the girls, anyway - I didn't partake on Sundays).

So, on the surface Lent looked like a big failure for me. I kept almost zero of my promises.

I do have ideas of what I'm doing for Lent, and Big Girl is more penitential-minded this year. She's giving up chocolate milk and all desserts. Little Girl still can't come up with much. And I've decided that they can't watch TV unless it's for school. (We are following the elections for school, plus EWTN will probably have several excellent programs that will help our spiritual lives a great deal.) Oh, but Sundays will be family movie day, so they'll get to watch stuff with us. I plan on finding a few movies to watch and picking one each week for us to watch together. (By the way, Heidi has an article brewing about giving up TV for Lent. I'd been thinking about it since Advent started, and even though my children think I'm so mean for the idea - and follow through - and my parents think I'm nuts and being extreme, I think it's going to be good for us to cut back on TV, especially the children. As strict as I am about what they watch, there's still too much of it going on.)

And I do have my no-coffee zone.

But I have realized something about last week. Much like Jennifer's discovery that she can't do everything as a homemaker, I have discovered that I can't do every devotion known to Catholics. Not even for Lent. What I tried to do last week was go from A to K all in one leap. I made Lent a big Fat Tuesday of devotions and found I couldn't keep up.

Instead of having a dozen devotions that I do poorly, I need to have one or two that I do well. A daily Rosary is nice. It's a lot more than I usually do, though I used to be in the habit of the daily Rosary. But to add that back in with daily Mass (which is, for me, nearly 40 miles round-trip each day to go to one church, and about 30 miles each way to go to another), and everything else I tried to do ... well, that's just destined to fail! I added too many things at once.

When you're gearing up for Lent, remember that you can do something positive - add a devotion, perhaps - as well as a giving-up/sacrifice. But remember, too, that you can't do it all. You might feel like you want to do it all, but you're only human.

If I'm successful with adding one devotion this year, and it becomes a habit for me and I continue it after that, then I'll also be able to add another new one next year. If both remain habits for me, I can add another. So instead of trying to go from A to K, I'll just go from A to B. And in a few years, I'll be where I previously tried to be all at once; I'll probably have a lot more success that way, too.

Have a blessed Lent, everyone.

Please browse my eBay items. Thank you.