My Lent has been a corker. I enter the Church this Easter, and I think I’ve been so preoccupied with other enormous changes in my life, like going back to work after nearly twenty years of being a stay at home mum, that I underestimated how hard Lent would be, above and beyond what it normally has been.
I mean, usually, it’s a case of give something up, commit to pray more, and just get on with it. This time? Massive amounts of interpersonal conflict to test the boundaries of my commitment to love God and others. A proper, upsetting shaking of my foundations of faith.
I should have seen it coming really, I have moved from atheist childhood to charismatic and then Reformed Baptist Protestantism, and am finally becoming Catholic after holding out against it for years. It’s not really surprising that my Lenten preparation for my first Catholic Easter would be extra hard and full of battles!
I haven’t faltered in my fast, by the grace of God, but I have been put in so many situations where the temptation to gripe, or bicker, or return evil for evil has been almost overwhelming, and with it a crushing sense of how unworthy and unready I am to receive Christ. It’s all for my good, I know, but goodness, there’s no sense of being eased in gently!