Ash Wednesday is coming up on February 14 (Coincidence? I think not!), and whether you grew up practicing the 40 days of Lent yourself, or your parents dragged you through every week of Stations of the Cross, it's a bit of a different ball game when you start college. Being a freshman in college — for me, and I'm sure many, many other religious people — is a balance between having a faith that is learned from your family and a faith that is diligently and honestly your own. Growing up in a practicing Catholic family — or any other denomination, really — sometimes the line between the two is a bit blurred.
It isn't news that college is a new territory of creating your own structured schedule — what time you go to class, if you go to class, when you eat and sleep and go out, if you go to church every Sunday — and the extent in which you depend on your family's structure and schedule isn't that obvious until you wake up on a Sunday morning and really don't want to get up.
And sure, it is a bit of a given that maybe the first year of college, things may have gotten a bit... lenient. There's a learning curve, right?
College is messy, busy and chaotic. My room is a mess, my hair is a mess, and on the worst of days I have to choose between taking a nap or taking a shower. It's so easy to get caught in this routine of worrying and studying and forgetting to eat. It only seems to be rock bottom when I find myself skipping biology lectures to attend my chemistry SI sessions.
And when it comes the time to seek comfort and peace at the end of the day, it becomes so much easier to simply check Instagram or binge Netflix instead of finding time for simple silence. Just one more episode of "New Girl," or one more scroll through my Twitter feed, one more personality quiz to see what my spirit dog is. It is a cycle of consuming and consuming — textbook readings, technology, vine compilations — and at the end of the day, I still find myself completely exhausted. Why am I still surprised?
What is really so beautiful about the 40 days of Lent is that it's actually kind of perfect for the college season.
Lent is and always has been a season of reflection and preparation - a somber time to take a breath and reset what really matters. Reflecting what is truly important in our lives, and preparing ourselves for Easter. It's a time to slow down, look at ourselves, and breathe.
Every day, especially in college, is a series of "getting things done." We finish one exam or project and immediately start on another. There is a constant "one more, and then I'll be done," whether it be homework assignments, Hulu episodes or naps. There is no time for to stop because there are deadlines.
Lent, here, is a checkpoint.
It's a retreat. It's some 40 days to escape into the desert, to challenge and discipline and recenter. Lent is a reflection of authenticity, of sacrifice, of the base of what faith is. It is a time to go deeper than the pretentiousness and superficiality of what has become so popularized in this culture of face value and to return to the barest bone of what Christianity is. It is a call back to what truly matters, anticipating the celebration of the highest act of love, that started and ended it all, Easter.
What you choose to do throughout Lent — whether you fast, give something up, or try to do something a little more these 40 days — is up to you, but if you're anything like me, it's a time to really reevaluate.
Reevaluate what really matters in our day-to-day lives. To stop this routine of "getting things done" and ask ourselves: Why is this not working? What am I so tired?
It is time to stop being physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted.
None of us are perfect, and I'm sure no one's Lent will be either, but do not be discouraged by the popularized futility of resolutions. Mistakes and misunderstanding, being busy and being forgetful, being prone to laziness and temptation, it is nothing that has not been before.
The significance of Lent is not for picture-perfect, filter worthy Instagram posts, or to enhance your VSCO theme. It is about empathy. It is about reflection. It is about humanity and reverence, because it isn't by ourselves that we can get through these 40 days, but by grace alone.
I encourage you, readers, to bear with me on these imperfect journeys of learning and preparing to be better, do better, and try again. To listen more than we speak. To create more than we consume. To appreciate the silence, the peace, and the simplicity of what really matters.
Because in the end, that's all there is.
