Lent didn’t mean much to me before I grew to really love God. Catholic-school student since kindergarten, I grew up with the practice around me, and treated it like a fun adventure, like an exciting challenge. And it is these things— a fun adventure with Christ, an exciting challenge to lean on God. But it’s also so much more than all of things I had made it before.

At this point in my life, it’s become a journey of listening, a surrender and a promise to wholly acknowledge that it’s not just me that’s running the show. I am a part of creation, I am within a divine undertaking, and my life’s not about me. It’s not about what I want, because if I did what I wanted all the time, I’d stay up until 2am and sleep in until noon every day, I’d eat all the sugar my body couldn’t handle, I’d live a life centered solely on the things most profitable to my own seeming contentment.

Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” I’ve come to understand that when I surrender to the divine path put before me, the desires of my heart change. After coming to acknowledge the existence and truth of something more, after believing in the miracle of life itself, after falling deeply in love the God of the Universe, it’s no longer just about desiring a relationship with the cutest boy I happen to meet, or striving after good grades to prove I’m a badass, or making enough money to obtain all the things I might want in the future (none of which are inherently bad things— it's about intention).

Because once this God of the Universe takes ground in your heart, it will never be the same.

That’s why Lent has become such a beautiful practice, because it’s a 40 day process of saying, hey, I understand that Your ways are higher than my ways. I understand that I don’t always know what’s best for me. I know that You are right, even when I refuse to listen.

So this Lenten season, I’ve decided to prioritize the body I’ve been gifted by lifting my sleep up to God. My first year of college, I did not get enough rest, and the past six months have been another battle with the alarm clock and a new job and a workload that only seems to get heavier.

A couple weeks before Lent had started, I’d been thoroughly confused by my inability to get up in the morning. I had never had so much trouble getting up for a new day, even on very little sleep in the past. One day I asked God, why am I feeling this way?

Do you think you’re better than the body I’ve given you? He said.

I promised I would go to bed by midnight, every night, for forty days.

It has been wonderful. Taking care of the bodies we’ve been blessed with is a divine command. Do we think we are not worthy of care? Do we rush to love others, leaving our own selves outside of our love?

Lent has been a real blessing the past two years, and I would very honestly encourage everyone to listen to the voice inside them that’s pulling them another way. We are often caught up in the wildness of life. We are often convinced that there is not another way.

But there is a Greatness out there beyond any comprehension, and our lives are a marvelous adventure to discovering it. What does your heart desire?