The Blessings within an Inconvenient Lent

I am not on social media all that often, because when I do, my feed seems to turn into a scroll of ‘mom hacks’. Meal prepping, cleaning tips, facial care regimens which won’t cut into the time I should be spending helicoptering my children, and reminders to journal more. Oh and, strength train because it’s perimenopause era, drink water, and eat protein. Apparently, just following someone online will allow me to also do all of these things, plus hold down a job, if I just plan it well.  

Which leads me to believe (during some of my grayer, more Seasonal-Affective-Disordered days here in the New England winter) that when I cannot make it all happen through planning, coordination and hacks, then I am doing something wrong.  

Recently, our son has had a variety of medical appointments. Some are routine, some are exploratory, some establish baselines for ongoing monitoring. If I had to categorize the appointments, they fall in the ‘important but not urgent’ cubicle. First off: I am grateful for the privilege of health insurance and proximity to a number of medical providers here in the Boston area. And also: every single one of his appointments is in the middle of the day, and almost all of them are at least an hour each way with local traffic (I do realize that this is also a privilege, to live within a commutable distance of good care).  

These appointments are vastly inconvenient to my planned weeks. I have tried optimizing their timing to coincide with low traffic volume, other necessary travel in those areas, or hack my way into making them into a two-fer visit with different departments. And yet, inevitably, he will miss school and I will miss work. My waking, productive hours will be spent in Boston traffic reassuring my neurodiverse kiddo stuck in a car for hours on end that no, this doctor will not give him an ouchie (which means a shot or blood draw, although we don’t lie about when they will).  

While I should have my child’s health as my primary focus, sometimes I slip into thinking about how inconvenient bodies can be to my schedule.

And then, I consider how few people take sick days from work, because they don’t want to fall behind. I consider how I push off my own physical care because it doesn’t fit into my commute or work schedule, getting lost in the cubicle of ‘not important, not urgent’ for far too long. I consider how multilayered and dense acquiring adequate care can be, and how the systems are no longer working.  

On Ash Wednesday, I received the ashes at church on my forehead, a mark of my mortal nature. I knelt and confessed many of the ways I have fallen short. I asked for forgiveness from God. I acknowledged the merit and grace of repentance.  

And the next day, I was still on the phone, trying to make our mortal bodies, created of dust and Spirit, less cumbersome to my Outlook calendar.  

The spiritualization of Lent is often enticing to me—creating opportunities for additional and intentional prayer and practice to deepen our faithfulness and reliance on the Holy One. I no longer find ‘diets for Jesus’ helpful in my journey (nor a redux of failed New Year’s resolutions). But sacrifice—that is what is holding my attention this Lent. Not giving up to benefit myself in some way, but giving up something in order to recognize our inherent reliance on the love of our Creator.  

What I see on social media tells me again and again that if I just work hard enough and smart enough, leaning in, manifesting something I think I deserve, that I can have it all. 

Lent tells me that I cannot have it all. No one can. And that we are asked to choose what we let go of, in order to be made more wholly into the image of a God who in the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to love the world within the limited, fallible framework of humanity. 

Our bodies are inconvenient. Sometimes they do not act in ways we wish them to. Sometimes they are created to require more care, more attention, more co-pays and insurance phone calls. Sometimes they fart in an elevator. Sometimes they replicate cells without our consent. Sometimes they throw themselves wailing on the floor of the market and refuse to get up. Sometimes they don’t fit into the built world and we spend every Thursday afternoon in waiting rooms so that we can work on ways to strengthen and adapt to what we can’t change around us.  

We can’t hack the dust we are made from. And perhaps that inconvenience can be a blessing to us, and to ours.