All this week, I've seen posts about how wonderful an experience this Lent was for people. How they've grown closer to God, and learned humility, and their sacrifices all worked out.And then there's this girl.
I'm the girl who deleted the facebook and twitter apps from her phone, but didn't have enough self control to stay off of the sites from Safari. I told myself I wasn't using the apps so I wasn't *really* breaking my sacrifice.
I'm the girl who made the promise to go to daily mass every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but in the entirety of Lent, went about five times.
I went to confession on Sunday night. And about two hours later, I sinned again.
And now as Lent's over, I felt angry at God that I didn't have some great spiritual experience. But, really, there's no reason to be angry.
I'm human. I'm gonna fall. I'm gonna get back up again, but chances are, I'll fall back down.
That's what Lent was like for me. A whole lot of falling and getting back up.
But: I got up. I didn't stay on the ground. I got back up.
My friend Christine wrote a great post that really spoke to me as I was struggling after my confession and immediate sinning. Through this weakness, God is giving me grace.
Tomorrow, I will be going to confession again. I'm getting back up, and I'm going to run.
The spiritual life is also like the life of an athlete. In training for the Olympics, first he fails hundreds, thousands of times. Think of a gymnast. He may never achieve perfection (no one's perfect!), but he improves, somehow. The secret: he always rose again whenever he fell. ;) And the best thing is, God is the one helping us up.
ReplyDelete[…] I said in my previous post, my Lent was not as fruitful as I had thought it would be on Ash Wednesday. I failed in all of my […]
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