Mine has not gone so well. As our Editor Bird Dog also says, it's usually the high point of my year with God, but this year it has not gelled the way it has in the past, and I have been continually distracted - or, more accurately, permitted myself to be distracted.
This leaves me feeling disappointed with myself, and thus more in need of Lent and of God's grace, and thus the thing snowballs in the wrong direction down the wrong hill. I know that I have only so many Lents, and so many Easters, in my life. Still, I cannot get in the groove this year and fear that Easter will therefore be a hollow celebration followed by just one more unnecessary high-calorie brunch, followed by an undeserved nap.
Something is in my way, but I do not know what it is. It's nothing obvious, or I would be able to identify it.
As contrast, our friend The Anchoress says:
Lent has been for me a daily movement through shadows and light; so many to pray for, so much to pray about and the comprehension of all of my limitations and deficiencies. I begin to know all I do not know and have never felt so little. Sometimes, as the psalmist says, “my sin is ever before me,” and the shadows feel very heavy; other times the silence and contemplation thrust me into dizzying light, where there is warmth but then I know even less. I realize I am almost wholly unschooled in love, unacquainted with decency. What I have learned most whole-heartedly this Lent is that my instinct throughout my life have been pretty-much right on: that I am an uncultured, untutored, self-concerned and barely conscious rough beast, and I have been slouching unaware through humanity for almost 5 decades; I am only finally evolving just a little - a very little - for the better.
I do not need much more self-flagellation, but there is something maybe short of that...
