3/3/09 Lent and the Library

I've been thinking about what to do for Lent. I know, I know, technically Lent started last week, but with the vacation and everything, I'm a little late to the party. Plus I haven't really been able to decide on any good thing to give up/start that will bring me closer to God and prepare me for Easter. I know in the past I've given up chocolate (hard!), but I just don't feel like that's the direction that God is leading me towards. I've read about some bloggers who turn off their comments and statistics for Lent so that they are not distracted by what other people think. I've read one blogger who gave up blogging entirely, and a couple who have given up the entire Internet- blogs, news sites, everything. And while that would definitely be a sacrifice, (the only thing that brought me back from Jamaica was that Tony wouldn't pay the $15.95/hour connection fee for me to satisfy my Internet addiction while we were on vacation), I'm not not seeing how that would translate into my own personal spiritual growth.

So I think that instead I'm going to read.

Ya'll know how much I love to read. I have a lifelong love affair with books. I devour them. And while I personally think that this is a good habit, I also can't help but notice that I have the tendency to read a lot of crap. I love a good mystery, or a cheesy romance, or a sci-fi thriller, and I don't think that there is anything wrong with that, but somewhere along the way I realized that that was all that I was reading. They're light, tasty, mindless books, and I love them, but I also think that they're the literary equivalent of junk food, and instead of rotting my teeth, I'm letting my brain rot instead. And worse, I'm spending so much time devouring the junk food books that I've neglected to pick up anything with substance for a while.

So for Lent, I'm giving up junk food books and focusing on substance books. And because the point of the entire exercise is to prepare myself spiritually for Easter, I'm going to focus heavily on things I need to work on. Stuff that I probably should be keeping in my regular reading diet anyway. I'll keep you posted on how it's going, what I'm reading, and what I'm learning.

Assuming, that is, that you haven't given me up for Lent.