I have been looking forward to this week for years. I know that seems unlikely, but it is true. For the past three years, Holy Week was just another week at college. Classes every day and rehearsals in the evening. For two of the years I was actually in a play and had rehearsals. For my senior year, I was directing and had performance nights during Holy Week. I had grown to appreciate the whole journey of Holy Week so missing all but Easter made me feel cheated. Last year, I didn’t even go to Easter services! I had missed the whole build up so I felt almost wrong going to church.( Anyway, I was exhausted and the thought of all of those people kind of scared me!)
But I knew this year I had to make sure that I was available for every aspect of the week, all of Lent actually. Ash Wednesday services and the beginning of a very disciplined way of life for 46 days. I did not give up anything per se. I just made sure that any decision I made, any bite I put in my mouth, any thing I bought, was truly representative of a disciplined life. I ate 3 meals a day but only one thing per meal. Now that might mean a bowl of pasta with veggies, or a sandwich or a salad with chicken cut up in it. What it meant was no snacks, no appetizers, no dessert, no bread or crackers or chips and no seconds! Nothing extra. One good bowl of food if it was a cohesive dish, but nothing more. I figured it would be easy. After the first week I had lost 4 pounds and that was not my intention. Lent is not a diet plan. So I started making sure my one thing was healthy and filling. I still lost weight, but not quite so rapidly. I have really missed grocery store cake, ( the one piece I bought in the deli as a treat every time I completed the dreaded chore of grocery shopping) chips, and my raw almonds in the middle of the afternoon.
I have not gone shopping for anything other than groceries, except when my son moved to his new apartment and needed a new bath mat and shower curtain. I had to put down the cute things I wanted to get at the linen store and I don’t mind saying I felt deprived! I have done no shopping online until yesterday when I found a member of our youth group’s online store and forgot my head. I won’t get the things I ordered until after Lent, but I was just so proud of her ingenuity and talent that I wanted to support her endeavor! I wanted to buy more, so even in my slip up I think the discipline thing still appeared! I did not do anything in the theatre world until last week, when I auditioned for a show that would not officially start rehearsals until May, well after Lent. I got cast and we did have a read through, but I do not feel it infringed on this time of contemplation and discipline.
And that is my hope, that I have created a new habit- to live a bit more disciplined in whatever I do. To not get more than I need, not to eat more than I should, to take time to study and contemplate more, to put more thought into everything I do.
I think whether you are a Christian or not, taking time to reflect on your life, where you are going, what you are doing, and why you are doing it, is something each of us should take time for. As a Christian, adding thoughts of God and what I should be doing in His service just adds another layer.
Now actual Holy Week is here. I was not feeling well for Palm Sunday, but drug myself to church anyway. That night I was honored to read the narration to a skit about grieving and death for our youth. I sounded like I had a clothes pin holding my nose and once I stumbled on a word as my nose ran, but I got through it. If you know me, you know that probably my very favorite thing to do in the whole world is read aloud. The theatre world has made me very self conscious about my southern accent and sound of my voice, but I still love to read aloud! (Fun books to little kids are the best, but I will read you the newspaper if given half a chance!) Being asked to read that narration made me happier than anything I’ve done in a while!
At our church we have noon day speakers on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week. I have gone this Monday and Tuesday and enjoyed them both. Today (Tuesday) the speaker was one of our former ministers who, although he intimidates me with his intelligence, is one of the best people I know. I think we actually agree on many subjects, he is just on a much higher plain, which causes me to clam up around him! But I loved hearing him again! Then this afternoon I attended a funeral of our beloved church secretary, Mary. She has been there for as long as I can remember. They said 20 years at the funeral, but I don’t really remember anyone before her. They called her the glue that held the church together and that was the absolute truth. In a post some time back, I described the time I tore into the church after our Good Friday walk through the streets of Homewood only to find out that my good friend had died that morning. Mary was the one who had to break the news to me when she realized the person who was supposed to have called me, hadn’t. I will never forget her care with me as she realized I had just been told something inadvertently instead of carefully. I will also never forget the look she gave the person who had failed to call me. I have other Mary stories as do any of us who have been at that church long. She will be missed. But somehow it seemed right that this funeral was during Lent and Holy Week.
I will miss tomorrow’s noon service while I go to do an errand with someone who needs me right now. I hope that I can be the person I need to be for someone who needs a shoulder. And then I will continue with another rehearsal for the kid’s musical and the rest of Holy Week. It is such a journey when you really pour yourself into it and I am glad to be able to do all of it this year. I am looking forward to our Easter celebration after the journey. I am also looking forward to when I can eat a whole meal, bread, dessert and all. I have a pair of black, flat shoes that are about to fall apart and I look forward to going shopping for a new pair. But I really hope that the lessons, discipline and new habits I have made stay with me long after I put the Easter bunnies away.
