Lent 2015

This has been a packed year. My hubby and I traveled to New York City, we celebrated our first anniversary in Victoria, B.C., I started my tenth year of teaching, and we HAD A BABY! That is the most life-changing thing that has happened this year. In the midst of all of the craziness of a new baby, transitioning to being a stay-at-home mom for the time being, and learning how to function on less sleep, Lent began.
I grew up in a non-liturgy following church, meaning that Lent was not really a thing that was talked about when I was growing up. It might have been mentioned, but in my limited experience it was the time that my Catholic friends gave up sugar or chocolate or some other food item. A few years ago, I began to explore Lent and participated in my own "fasts" from different things in preparation for the coming of Easter. Often, though, the season of Lent would sneak up on me and I would hastily choose what I was going to "give up" or decline for 40 days. Some of those have been helpful, although the most powerful one was a thought-out, pre-planned fast. It took a lot of brain power and focus for those 40 days and allowed me to continually bring my attention back to the idea that this was a time of preparation for the celebration of the Risen Lord.

As I said, in the midst of all of the craziness of a new baby, transitioning to being a stay-at-home mom for the time being, and learning how to function on very little sleep, Lent began. It snuck up on me again. I didn't have a plan. I didn't know what to give up. I didn't know how to prepare my heart for Easter, especially since this new baby thing was taking a lot of my energy and brain power.

The difference this year being that social media brought me some new ideas.
One of the Lenten practices I stumbled upon this year was a "photo a day" practice. Each day a word is presented and it is the participants job to take a picture that somehow represents that word. I will be posting my photos on my blog, but it all comes from:
http://www.rethinkchurch.org/articles/spirituality/2015-lenten-photo-a-day-project
You can follow other people's posts on Facebook, Twitter (#40days, #rethinkchurch), Pinterest, or Instagram (#40days, #rethinkchurch).

Please do not judge my pictures too harshly. They will be taken with a simple iPhone, and if you followed my "30 before 30" adventures you will know that I never did get to the one regarding learning about photography, so there aren't any wizardly good pictures being taken--no real technique, just trying to capture some of the things I am thinking about as I attempt to change my focus and draw closer to God during this time of preparation for celebration.

Also I am back-posting a bit, so if information seems out of order it may be because I am posting the picture as if I had it all together from the beginning, but I am really already 10 days in and just getting things up on the blog. Therefore, some of my musings may seem out of place as I reflect on things that happened after the day that the picture was intended for. Clear as mud? Right, here we go!