Yesterday I did something I haven't done in a while. Since Ash Wednesday actually. This year for Lent I decided to give something up. I've never participated in the practice of fasting for Lent before. Funny, growing up in a family that had heavy Catholic influence, I kind of always thought it was cool that I didn't have to give anything up when my cousins did. Now I'm realizing how neat it is to forgo something for Christ to honor His sacrifice on the Cross. And, on another funny note, when I told my sister this year what I was giving up, she just looked at me crookedly and said, "Well, I don't believe in Lent." From our experience as kids I knew what she meant but I wanted to stop and ask her if she then also didn't believe in the cross. I didn't. Maybe I should have. I don't know. All my sister meant was that she didn't believe in giving anything up for Lent. It's not how we were raised. Such a retort from me, while funny, might have been a bit harsh. But fasting for Lent this year changed my perspective in some major ways.
One such way was to do with what I gave up. That actually wound up being a more negative thing than I thought it would at first. I gave up coffee houses, bookshops, and all manner of places I would go to write and be alone.
I've been struggling with writing of late (for about 7 months) and I thought maybe finding new or different places to write would be better and helpful. All that happened was that I quit entirely. And, as I usually fit in my quiet time and devotionals with my writing time I suffered some in that area as well.
So what I learned during Lent is that for me Starbucks isn't really about the coffee. Sorry to say - though I do love the caffeine - the atmosphere is vital to who I am. I really don't function well without my time in bookshops and coffee houses. Yesterday was kind of like a breath of fresh air. Oddly bookshops give me the borders I need to be myself. To creatively flow and be me. I'm not going to try to analyze it but I know I'm not going to give it up again in the near future. That's what I know. I love Borders and basked there for three (or was it four) glorious hours yesterday. I'll go anywhere of the like any time I can. I've just gotta go about re-establishing routines that make me tick.
And then figure out what to do about my broken laptop.
Back in college, in 2004 when blogging was hardly even a thing yet, I was here. Blogging before blogging meant anything to anyone. You can look in the archives for my past writings, but it was much more like a journal in the past. When we started fundraising, I messed around with the idea of launching something new for this new phase of our journey but actually hated that idea. I am a sum of all of my life and so much of it is here already. So I'm keeping it here. At least for now.
My main focus these days is blogging about our newest journey into the bizarre and wonderful world of gestational surrogacy. Posts dated 2013 and forward will trend heavily toward that journey. I don't promise everything I write will be about though. There might be other things that sneak in occasionally.
Please come along our journey with us. As the saying goes, "The more, the merrier!"
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