Lent

Once again, Lent is upon us, thankfully later than it was last year.  I'm not exactly sure when it was that I started, but most years I give up something for Lent.  One year it was chocolate (about a week after my sister had given me a box of cherry cordials for Valentine's day).  Another year it was pop, which lasted until the day before Easter when the Pizza Hut worker asked me to taste the drink I was buying for my co-worker to make sure they had the lines right in their pop machine.  Those are the big ones.

This year, Jeff and I decided to give up tv for Lent.  All tv.  For all of Lent.  Well, sort of.  We gave ourselves some exceptions, because the intent is to not have it on at home in the background all the time.  Admittedly, I watch more tv than Jeff does.  Almost every morning, I turn on NBC's The Today Show while we're getting ready.  Then at 11 I switch over to ABC for The View and it stays there the rest of the day until the news comes back on.  I just like NBC news better.  But at 10:35pm we tune in to The Late Show with David Letterman and fall asleep to that, unless its Saturday, in which case we fall asleep to Saturday Night Live.  Seriously, a tv is on in our house almost all the time.  

So the point is to be more intentional about spending quality time together.  We decided that we would not watch tv content online because that's really not that different than watching tv.  Also, we decided that didn't include renting and watching movies, or watching tv at friends' houses if that is the activity.  (We are aware that Lent falls mostly in March, during a thing called March Madness.  We are very thankful to be back in the listening area where we can listen to Bob Davis call the games on the radio, even when the KU Jayhawks play in the Final Four and National Championship games.)  I'm finding that the challenge for us is that we don't spend the evenings on the couch with each of us on a laptop.  That seems like replacing the tv with the computer and is not so much a sacrifice or different way of living, which to me is the point of giving something up for Lent: it forces you to rethink your every day patterns and way of living.

Which brings me to another blog I read today.  Jon Acuff writes the blog Stuff Christians Like.  It's kind of a tongue-in-cheek, real look at "stuff" Christians like, hence the name.  Today's post examined giving things up for Lent, specifically tv, and his points made me stop to think.  Particularly #9:

  Have I really learned anything if I just gorge myself on all the shows I missed the minute Lent is over? If I lock myself in a closet the day after Lent concludes and watch 19 hours of Lost and 30 Rock and the Office and the Soup, has anything in my life changed?

So I ponder this as I examine how my days are different without the tv on in the background.  How is your life changing by what you are giving up or adding for Lent?