Here God, I got you this basket of my candy bars for Lent

a #40daysofgoodshit update

The Lent I gave up listening to the radio in my car was surprisingly difficult. I’d be on my way to the gym, several minutes into an NPR story, before realizing I wasn’t “supposed” to be doing that. Then I’d quickly turn it off, hoping Jesus didn’t notice.

For hundreds of years, Christians have chosen to set aside a small amount of comfort during the forty days before Easter. We give up chocolate, gossip, social media, or some other form of anesthesia we use to insulate ourselves from pain. We peel away one thin layer between ourselves and what is true.

And it’s pretty easy to think we’re doing God a favor with all this self-denial. Like we’re gathering up a big basketful of candy bars and hours on Facebook to offer God like some kind of bad-habit charity drive for the Almighty. And then if there happens to be one less Snickers bar in the basket because I succumbed to temptation and ate it myself, then it’s a Lent fail.

But there is no winning or losing at Lent. I cannot impress God by giving up sweets or Instagram. Nor can I disappoint God by indulging in them after I promised not to.

Lenten fasts and disciplines simply allow me to see my small comforts and layers of insulation for what they are: the things I reach for to feel safe and cared for, if not by God, then at least by myself. The things I use, often without thinking, to take the edge off being alive.

Reaching for a cookie, the radio, the Facebook sign-in page when we have decided to give them up for Lent is not a sign of weakness, it’s just a chance to pause and wonder: Why do I reach for the thing I’ve given up? What am I hoping to numb? What feeling am I trying to avoid, outrun, or change? What is it I actually need, that by reaching instead for what I want, I’m ignoring?

I keep thinking of a line from Melissa Febos’ most recent book in which her therapist says, “It is not possible to ever get enough of a thing you do not actually need.”

With my Lenten “40 Days of Good Shit” project, my intention is attention. Rather than giving something up, I’ve chosen to notice the good, the kind, and the beautiful in my daily life—and to post about it each day. Many of you have joined me, which I find delightful … I love reading your posts!

In our current war-doomscape, atrocity-of-the-day chaos, I’ve committed to noticing the good in each day and reporting back. And honestly, it’s worked.

Some days—like on Thursday when I held a newborn baby girl—the good thing, the beautiful thing, was easy to find.

Other days, not so much.

A few of the last 17 days have been hard. Not hard in any interesting or dramatic way that would make me needful of pity or concern. Just hard in the unavoidable, some-days-suck sort of way and I was like, ugh. Fuck this. There is nothing good or beautiful.

This morning I realized that the sucky days last week felt a lot like the sucky days in previous Lents when I thought: Fuck this. I don’t want to turn to prayer. I want to turn to Ben & Jerry’s. And some of those day I did. I just ate the stupid Cherry Garcia, which for the record, is fine, by the way. And understanable.

Because - a sugar high is immediate. So is the dopamine from scrolling on Facebook when I swore I’d stop. There is a familiar payoff to defaulting to my comforts. They work…at least for a minute.

Which has made me wonder: is there also a payoff for not noticing a single good or beautiful thing on sucky days?

Maybe the payoff is that I get to keep feeling sorry for myself.
Maybe I get to stay mad at someone else.
Maybe I get to keep telling a story in which I am aggrieved.
Maybe I get to excuse myself from being of service to anyone else because, well, my day was lousy.
Maybe by continuing to feel bad about the news of the world, I get to feel like I’m doing something, when in fact I’m not doing anything other than refusing to pay attention to what is also good.

Anyhow, on the days when the good shit is obvious, paying attention to it is a joy.

On the days when there’s nothing especially lovely or enjoyable, paying attention to how beautiful my little sunbathing dog is—or noticing that the sunset is, in fact, worth looking at, with its layers of color punctuating the night sky—that in itself is prayer.

This practice of taking notice of what is good and beautiful, even on sucky days, helps remove one thin layer between me and what is true: that even the sunset, and the dog, and the utterly ordinary day sing the glory of God.

Friends, a spiritual life does not demand that we pretend the world is any better than it is; only that we do not miss how the world is often much better than we feel.

Maybe the point was never to impress God with our little basket of sacrifices, but to notice that grace was here the whole time—waiting beneath the noise, the sugar, the doom, the static. Whether we are paying attention of not.

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Wanna join in the 40 Days of Good Shit Project? It’s not too late! Click the post below to learn more.

Have you been joining me? Tell me how it has been for you!

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