Awake for Lent
Finding daily opportunities for penance
Posted by Arwen Mosher
in Faith
on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 3:32 PM
I am giving up sleep for Lent.
It wouldn’t be my first choice for a fast, but my one-month-old has made the decision for me. Forty days of sleeplessness it is!
I’m kidding, of course. While it’s certainly true that the amount of sleep I’m getting has greatly decreased since before the baby was born, I haven’t yet had to give it up entirely. The Lenten disciplines I’m actually making this year have nothing to do with sleep.
Plus, I believe the things you give up for Lent are supposed to be willingly sacrificed, yes? Not wrested from your completely unwilling, completely exhausted self?
I like to think that if God called me to give up sleep for His sake, I’d be able to do it. I’m not so sure I would, though.
Maybe this is why God has timed our son’s reflux-y, fussy first months to coincide with Lent: to give me an extra opportunity to offer up dozens of tiny sacrifices to him, and hopefully to grow in holiness in the process. If you look at it that way, the timing is quite fortuitous.
This isn’t the first time that Lent has come at such an appropriate time for me, either. Three years ago it coincided exactly with the first trimester of my pregnancy. That pregnancy was particularly difficult and I tried very hard to offer up my day-to-day discomforts as penance. I didn’t always succeed, but ultimately I do think that it made Lent more fruitful for me that year.
It occurs to me that there’s a powerful metaphor here as well. A pregnancy and a new baby are both sources of very great joy. But because of sin, it’s sometimes necessary for us to go through suffering in order to reach the joy.
Christ’s death and resurrection is also a source of joy, the greatest in the universe, but in order to bring that joy to us he had to make the ultimate sacrifice. And in order to share in it we must take up our own crosses and join him on the way.
I already have with me the joy of my little son. Weathering the trials of his newborn days will simply help me to appreciate more fully the blessing that he is to our family.
As Christians we always have with us the joy of Easter, since Christ has already conquered death. Lent is simply a way to prepare our hearts to participate more fully in that joy.
This Lent, as I’m forced to give up sleep on numerous occasions, I’ll be trying to focus on that.
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