Walking in the Lenten Desert

It’s much harder for me to think of something vague like, oh, you should exercise more. Go figure that out. But it’s much easier for me to think ” okay you should do 10,000 steps for 40 days.”

And so today I want to talk about how you can think about lent. You are however many years old and you’ve been through probably many Lenten seasons. And just like gold trauma, where we set goals and we don’t achieve them often, and then we begin to have negative feelings, negative memories about goals. I think we can do the same thing about lent. Where we kind of feel like we failed even before we began. I feel like I’m probably not really going to do it. I always forget. I’m so weak. I never do a good job. Sometimes we feel like that even before it has begun. And then the other thing which I think is totally spiritual tax is we forget to even think about it. Like some of you are today years old. And you’re thinking about this Lenten season and you’re thinking, oh, shoot. I haven’t prayed about it. I haven’t talked to the kids about it. When is mass today? Like you already feel behind. But then you will use that as a way to beat yourself up and to not make a good plan. Because remember we talk about this all the time here. When you are in a stressful state, you are not great at planning.

So, if you were already stressed, feeling bad about yourself, judging yourself thinking that you’re doing it wrong. Then your ability to make plans is low. So, first of all, you were not behind. God is outside of time. He knows your heart. He knows your intentions. Just take a deep breath right now. Let’s take another one slower this time. You were doing just fine. Let us get ready to walk into the desert. I like picturing that way. I like feeling as if it is a choice. You know, Jesus looked at his friends. I don’t know what their conversations were, but they were probably like, what? You’re crazy. Why are you doing that? So interesting to me that even throughout the gospels, you see how much the disciples questioned him. Even after just the most incredible miracles.

They questioned him. I imagine they question him about this too. Like Peter going “we don’t have time for this Jesus.” How long are you going to be gone? We need you. So Jesus willingly walks into the desert. I don’t know if he knew how long he would go. I assume so because I think he had perfect knowledge. I assume he also knew that he would be tempted. So, let us just make the choice right now. We’re on the edge of the desert. We’re looking back, we see our cushy cities. Our homes are soft blankets. Our water bottles, all the things. All the comforts, all the conveniences. And we say, you know what? I’m willing to leave. I’m willingly leaving all of those things, all of the people behind to walk in the desert.

Now of course, realistically, we are not leaving our families and going on a 40 plus day trip into the middle of nowhere. It has to be interior, interiorly we are walking in the desert. We were shedding comforts and we were walking in the desert. And we are doing so with the express purpose of seeing what comes up. Of seeing why we are sad, what we miss, what we are attached to what God wants to show us. We ought not to think that this is going to be a good time, but it is a cleansing experience. Where we draw closer to the Lord. Heaven is real. Hell is real. How we live puts us on a path to one another at every moment. It is worth it this time. It is worth this effort. The discomfort of walking through the desert. Now, for some of you. You are already carrying some pretty heavy crosses. This was true for me. In bed rest years. I was already in that significant amount of physical pain I had already given up so much to have to be in bed. To be parenting my kids from across the room, unable to get up, unable to hold them when they fell down. Unable to get food for myself.

Some of you are already dealing with some very heavy crosses. And so, what I think you should do is to go into the desert. Where your eyes are fixed on the cross more. You may not need to give up chocolate or television or something else that is traditionally what people do during lent. But maybe you just need to endure what you’re going through with more grace. Instead of fighting this cross instead of resisting it to just say, I’m going to pick it up. I’m going to carry it for lent. An interiorly in my heart. I am going to pay attention to what the Lord is telling me. He wants all of you. He wants your love. He wants your trust. He wants you to live in the present moment and not to chew on the future or to dig up the past and dwell on it.

We’re going to walk in the desert and we’re going to meet the Lord there. And the devil will tempt you. The devil will say, hey. It’s so much better. Back at home, back in the city, back with your comforts. He will tempt you with pride and fullness. Hey, you’re so great. Look how great you are. And the truth is that we are little. We were like children. We have no strength. Everything good that we do, we do, but for the grace of God. The devil will tempt you with an easy way out. It might be money, might be time, might be power, maybe your reputation. But we are going to cling to Jesus in this desert and say, no I am his. And I’m walking in this desert on purpose. I choose to be here. It’s funny how lent feels like both a short time and an agonizingly long time. Like if I say, oh, you could give up sugar for 40 days, that’s not that long. But it is not the time that makes it hard. It is the detachment, the process of realizing that we were overly attached to something.

And usually the holy spirit leads us. The kind of know what the thing is. So we pick something that we are overly attached to. I was thinking about trying to give up complaining. I just don’t know that I could do that. Like, it feels so big. But I am definitely giving up sugar. But I like doing that and I’ve done that many times so that it doesn’t feel as hard to me. And then I want to listen to or read something religious for the last hour of my day. And I’ve done a pretty good job of kicking and looking at my phone, but sometimes I will play a game or, I don’t know, just do something leisurely, which isn’t even wrong, but I, I want to purposely give the last hour of my day to something religious. Because I tell myself this lie that I’m too tired. Like I’m too tired.

But last night I was listening to catechism for the first time in a year which I have just been listening too slowly. It was never my intention to go through the whole thing in the year, but I just put it on cause I find it interesting. So I’m kind of slowly moving through that and then I liked this book, “The fulfillment of all desire” by Ralph Martin. So much that I got the audio version of it too. I had the book. But I enjoyed it so much. I thought, oh, I can just put that on and listen to it as well. I’ve been thinking about ways that I can walk more closely with him. And I like to think of lent like that. There are things that I like to give up. Ways that I want to purposely walk into the desert. And when you think about a desert, you know, it’s hot, it’s dry. There isn’t any water. There aren’t a lot of fun things in the desert. So there’s taking things away, but then I like adding things.

I like adding spiritual things in to give the Lord more time to talk to me. I think it’s so interesting that Jesus, who was the son of God, spent so much time in prayer. All right. Like, pardon me thinks, oh, he didn’t need to do that. He was the son of God and he probably knew everything but he modeled it for us. He showed us that it doesn’t matter. How holy you are, how close you are to the Lord. We give him that time. We have a relationship with him. So I want you to choose to walk in the desert this Lenten season. It doesn’t matter what’s happened in the past, there is only today. I want you to pray and ask the holy spirit to guide you about what you should give up or what you should add, and maybe both.

And I really think about it in terms of loosening your grip on things of the world. And opening your arms so you can better receive wisdom, grace, mercy, and love from the Lord. It doesn’t matter. Whether we are held down; attached to the world by many sick ropes or by one tiny string as thin as a thread It doesn’t matter. We want to cut all ties. We want to be in the world, but not of it. Which means we’re still thinking about Soccer practice. We’re still feeding the kids. We’re still trying to decide if we’re volunteering at school or what books we should be reading. We have to have clothes. But I think the trick is to not let any of those things steal our peace. We can have peace, no matter what God puts in front of us. And if you’re looking for a great spiritual book to read, I highly recommend searching for and maintaining peace. You could probably read it. Three times over Latin, it’s a short book and that’s exactly what I would do. I would read it and soak it up and then I would turn right back again and reread it.

And if you want a daily podcast, I am doing a series on Faustina. Faustina and her diary. Racine is the Saint who Jesus gave divine mercy to. He appeared to face him many times and told her, commissioned this painting, create this feast day. Here’s the divine mercy Chaplet. And so, every day for lent on the daily podcast I’m doing reflection on something from her diary. She can find where any podcasts are and you can also go to catholicmomcalm.com/lent2024 to get that workbook. It’s just a free PDF. And I have a passage from her diary and a reflection question every day. But you don’t need to do that. I want you to pray. I want you to ask the holy spirit. Lord, what is my desert? What am I giving up? And how am I going to draw closer to the Lord? And if you are already in a season, with a heavy cross, I want to invite you to just carry it better. Carry it with less complaining, with less resistance. Carry it with more trust and surrender.

I just think that, If we did wear special glasses, we could put on some special spiritual warfare glasses. First of all, I think it would frighten us all so much, but, if we just looked around, like if you went to church on Sunday and you put on these glasses and you just saw the clanking of swords, the demons fighting for your attention, the angels fighting to keep you. In God’s army, this huge battle that’s happening. The darkness that is around us, the way that this modern world has hypnotized us. I think you would see it is much worse than we realize. We have been tricked. We’ve been tricked to care about things that are not important. We’ve been tricked to not take time for the things that are important. And it’s on so many fronts that it feels overwhelming.

And, you know, you’ll often hear me talk about even just our food choices. The vigilance that we have to have around the books that we read and the movies that we watch. I mean, my husband and I, it just feels exhausting to find a movie that is appropriate just for us, not even for the kids, that’s even more exhausting. But one of the ways that we kind of level up, like if this was a video game, we would, you know, supercharge ourselves is through prayer and fasting. Alms giving is important during lent too, but I don’t know that it does this same thing, like they say prayer and fasting, prayer and fasting helps us to discern things better. And I think it gives us a religious strength to fight in this battle.

So as you fast today, Ash Wednesday, if you’re listening to it on Wednesday ask the Lord to show you. If you decide from your intellectual human brain and want you to set that down for a moment and go ask him. Lord, what is my desert this Lenten season? Be open to what he has to tell you. He is so good and he chooses the perfect things. He’s going to pick something that is so right for you and for this time I want you to step into the desert intentionally and know that this process, the dryness, the darkness, the difficulty of walking in the desert is cutting the strings. It is cutting our ties to the world so that we may be prepared for heaven.

All right. My friends. Two things, one We are decluttering in the community, so if you want to come join the Catholic Mom Community, come join us. We’re doing our decluttering program. And when you join, you get access to the decluttering program and everything else. I got a couple of emails asking me about that, but, our focus in the group will be decluttering, but you can also go through and check out our parenting videos, our marriage videos. We have a bunch of stuff in there. But we’re doing this challenge. I’m really excited. And then, the daily podcast I’m doing is the Faustina series. So that’s completely free and you can download the workbook. It’s in the show notes of every episode, but you can also find it at Catholic mom calm.com/lent2024.

I am praying for you. God loves you. He’s refining you for heaven. Heaven is real. It is brighter and more lovely than you could imagine. It is a love that you have never felt. Just worth fighting for. I am praying for you. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.