CLAUSTROPHOBIC
I pick up a piece of mail and move it to a different pile. I open the Kindergarten folder of corrected work that was sent home and look around for a spot to stash it. Thank you notes, greeting cards, offers for discounts on car insurance. I move things from one pile to the next. I shove things in my purse “so that I can deal with them when I have a free minute.” Friends are coming over and some of these piles get swooped into another bigger pile in a closet or seldom used corner of the house. After a few weeks of this same cycle, I start to feel like my life is closing in on me. There is too much stuff in our house, too many obligations clogging our schedule, too many tasks that need tending to on my to-do list.
And it is difficult to know where to begin. The idea of changing my ways is overwhelming, and yet to continue to shift things from one pile to the other is unsustainable. I am procrastinating at dealing with the things of life… not because they do not matter, but because other things also clammer for my attention. Things like nursing my baby, showing up to work, liturgy planning a funeral with grieving neighbors, and making sure my kids take a bath at least every few days. As I get caught up in the day to day, it is easy to feel like there is no other way to live.
Lent reminds me that there is another way. The success of Lent will not be measured by the holiness quotient of the new things I take on, or the amount of coffee I give up. Lent will be given meaning by the whole-heartedness with which I allow Jesus into every corner of my life… even the corners where I have stashed the crumbled remains of Valentines cards, unreturned Christmas gifts, and papers with no hope of ever knowing the inside of a filing cabinet.
Instead of continuing to move my problems from room to room, I want to spend Lent laying all of my concerns before God. I don’t like the images of Lent as a “stripping away” or “emptying”. Instead, I imagine Jesus looking lovingly at the fullness of my life, the places where it bursts at the seams. I imagine Jesus looking at me with compassion and care, telling me that all will be well. I imagine the power of God to transform my hopes, my overwhelmedness, and my anxieties. In doing so, perhaps God will reveal to me habits, attitudes, or commitments that I no longer need. Metanoia does not often come in one giant sweeping conversion, but rather in making space for God in every nook and cranny. As I embark on a Lenten practice of allowing God into these tired and forgotten places, I trust that He will create space for greater life to flourish.
A Mini Lenten Awareness Examen
I imagine God looking at me with love.
I give thanks for who I am, for the people and things that make up my life.
As I reflect on my day, I ask myself:
What fills me with joy, life, and hope?
What do I feel like “hiding in the closet” or escaping from?
Where might Jesus be asking me to love, and experience greater love in return, going forward?
Jen Coito