Lent

This has been a challenging Lent for me. Last year, I was totally prepared, to the point of having done two weeks of preparatory work to set up my spiritual reading and action before Lent started. On Ash Wednesday, I was good to go, and I started directly into a new prayer routine as well as the usual sacrifices. Then, on the first Friday of Lent, we had a 9.0 earthquake. The kids and I ended up taking one of the Voluntary Departure flights home to my parents' house and driving up to South Bend, IN, where Patrick is at school and my sister and her family live. We stayed at their house and shared in their beautiful Lenten practices of nightly family rosary, abstaining from meat for the whole season, Sunday Mass at their cathedral. We continued our school work in their home.

In Holy week, we learned that it was safe for us to return to Misawa. Just in time for Easter. :D We were supposed to arrive home on Holy Thursday, but flight delays brought us here on Good Friday. Grateful as I was for our safety, for the joyful, peaceful, restorative time with my family, and to return to John in time for Easter, I missed the Lent I had planned for myself.

So this year, I decided that I would go back to last year's plans and complete them this year. Easy to do, I thought. For hadn't I already gotten all set up last year? I could just fall right in where I had left off.

Ha.

Unlike last year, when Meghan had not started preschool and Katie was not yet in high school, my daily schedule has been a bit out of my control. Katie played indoor soccer, then joined the Edgren HS soccer club, and now their girls' soccer team. Joseph joined Boy Scouts and is playing basketball. John and I are teaching Confirmation along with leading the mens' and women's groups at church. Okay, I was leading the women's group last year, too, but you get the picture.

How can I have gotten too busy for God? Well, I haven't, really. I just don't have the same spaces in my day as I had last year. My worship time is more tied to my time at daily Mass and in the quiet moments afterwards, while my morning prayer takes place in whatever tiny space falls between making John's lunch and wishing him a good day and Meghan calling down the stairs to ask about breakfast. Usually, that means I have time to do my women's Bible study homework, but not much else, and sometimes it is at the breakfast table. At lunchtime, the children and I go to Mass and pray the Angelus together. After school, I drive Katie and a friend to soccer practice and try to get in a Divine Mercy chaplet on the drive home. We have lamely attempted nightly family rosary. I am determined to make that happen every evening between now and Easter, and hopefully beyond. We used to be so good at that one, but schedule changes pushed it right out. I miss it too much to let it be gone anymore.

But no Mother's Rule of Life for me this year. :[ One of these years, probably when I don't have any children left at home, I'm going to get through that book and bring "order to my home and peace to my soul." It isn't too late to start, I guess, but ugh! I wanted to do it during Lent to be finished before we start gearing up for our PCS pack-outs, which we hope will be in June. Serious de-cluttering will be needed before then.

Which brings me to 40 bags in 40 days. Another thing I am doing for Lent. Sort of. I haven't been keeping very good track. Just trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible. Again, no order to this. Just stabs here and there at various closets and bedrooms as they get annoying enough to make me want to attack and clean them out.

I think I need to pray to St. Josemaria Escriva, who said, "If you don't have a plan of life, you'll never have order." He's right. But I need time in my day to make the plan.