Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!
By: Therese Thelen
Hey guys! How is your lent? Humor me (even if I can’t see you and I don’t know you), but take a moment to actually reflect on that question. Regardless of what you did for Lent... maybe you did Amazing Lent... maybe there was a special sacrifice to be offered up, or extra prayers to be said, or maybe some action for someone else to be performed. Maybe you just wanted to establish a prayer routine, get up earlier, or cut sugar out of your diet! No matter what it was, how is it going?
I have always been a chicken when it comes to going to confession. I would always ask, “IS IT FACE- TO-FACE???” Last Lent, I decided that I needed to go to confession one more time before Easter, and so I went last night. I entered the confessional... the unsuspecting victim that I was... and wouldn’t you know it, IT WAS FACE-TO-FACE! After I had confessed everything, I was looking down at my hands (probably squirming), and then Father asked, “So, did you do something for Lent?” I finally looked up, “ERM yeees, I did.” “ANNND? How’s it going?”
My Lent had been nothing short of rough. I had fallen short with everything that I had decided to do. When I told Father this, he just laughed! Maybe I had something on my face, but I’m pretty sure he had heard that same thing more than once that day. What I realized is that Lent isn’t supposed to be easy. The saying “No pain, no gain” is right on. If we aren’t suffering through it, if our sacrifices are not sacrifices, then we probably aren’t doing as much as we should be. When things are hard, I am going to fail at some point, the goal is to not give up. Growth comes with trial.
I had been struggling a lot with distraction, and it made my Lent so much harder. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything, and I’d just walk around with my head in a cloud. I was thinking about it, trying to figure out what was distracting me so much, but I couldn’t seem to pinpoint it. It almost felt like it wasn’t a physical distraction. I said that out-loud at one point, and that’s when it hit me. My distraction was interior. It was a distraction of the heart. It was making everything I was doing feel empty and useless, including praying.
That’s when I caved in. I let my interior distraction, this funk that I was in, become an excuse for not praying. Once I gave into that, it just kept mutating into more problems. I was constantly grumpy, rude, and lazy, among other things, and I tried to convince myself that I didn’t care. All of this happened after I GAVE IN to my temptation. I had felt like my prayers were empty, as if they were nothing but words, but the fact is, they weren’t. I just had to keep praying, no matter how I felt about it. No matter how dry it seemed.
I am telling you this because maybe you aren’t experiencing exactly what I am, but I am sure in some way, and at some point, you have experienced something similar. If you feel like you have failed in some part of your life, don’t worry! When under trial, do as the Robinsons did (From Disney’s Meet the Robinsons of course, I’m not just quoting some random guy named Robinson), “KEEP MOVING FORWARD!” Even if it feels empty or useless. At the end of our talk, Father told me, “Choose one particular Lenten endeavor, and for this last week of Lent, focus on it, and unite it to Jesus’s suffering during his passion.”
As we enter holy week, I encourage you to do the same. Reflect on your Lent! How has it been going? If you have failed in some way, that’s ok! Don’t give up! Renew your commitment, and remember, Jesus suffered every kind of pain and suffering in order to give us the most precious gift, a chance to choose to live with Him forever. It is exactly that though. A choice. In this last week of Lent, unite your sufferings to Jesus, and ask him for the strength to overcome your temptations and choose him.
As a wise woman once said, “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful”. That was St. Theresa of Calcutta. God knows we are human and that we are going to fall, however, when we do fall, he does expect us to get back up.
