I've decided to observe Lent for the first time since 1996. (And
that was the only other time in my life that I've done it.) I
haven't done much research on it myself, but I know it's a Catholic
tradition that many Evangelical Christians have chosen to implement
on an individual basis. It starts 40 days before Easter (the day
after Mardi Gras), and for those 40 days, you commit to sacrificing
something out of your daily life. Some people commonly sacrifice
caffeine or sugar or carbonated beverages or even alcohol. Some
people choose to sacrifice habits other than eating, such as TV or
video games or the internet. The idea is to give up something that
you're used to having in your daily life, in order to focus on God
and to appreciate the much greater sacrifice that He made for us on
the cross. (I might be totally botching up this entire explanation
as far as its traditional sense, but this is just my own personal
interpretation of Lent and what it means to me.)

My decision to observe Lent this year was rather spontaneous and
came about in kind of a strange way. It started when a friend of
mine was telling me about a strict diet that she started last week
for health reasons, which limited the places we could have lunch
together this past Sunday, since she might otherwise feel tempted to
eat something unhealthy. This made me more aware of my own eating
habits and how I've fallen away from my own commitment to eating
healthy that I made a few years ago when I turned 30. The other
night, I found myself feeling guilty eating the last bit of a
personal-sized chocolate cake that I'd bought last week. The next
day I made a conscious decision not to order fries in the cafeteria
at work. Later that night when I went grocery shopping, I decided
not to buy any potato chips or cookies that I was thinking of
buying. And I felt good about those decisions.

It wasn't until the actual first day of Lent (referred to by
Catholics as Ash Wednesday), when someone on a Christian Yahoo Group
mentioned it, that I even considered turning my latest healthy
eating habits into a real commitment. I realized that it was a
rather neat coincidence that Lent had just started, and that I
already had a pretty good idea of what sacrifices I could make for
the next 40 days.

Of course, if I'm going to make a commitment, it has to have
specific rules. I can't just say, "I'm going to eat healthy,"
because how would I determine what's "healthy" and what's not? So
I've come up with a set of rules to determine what I will not allow
myself to eat or drink during these 40 days of Lent. When I did it
in 1996, I simply eliminated carbonated drinks. This time, I'm
making more serious sacrifices. There is no goal such as weight loss
or cholesterol reduction or blood-sugar control; it's just a
commitment that I plan to stick to for the sake of making sacrifices
for God. Hopefully good health can be a positive side-effect.

The details of my commitment are listed at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/celebok/67090.html#cutid1

--Wayne