By Allison Anderson

It’s only ten in the morning and my stomach is rumbling. Loudly. It’s hoping I will stop what I am doing and give in. Just a few more hours I say to myself and I go back to my silence. Praying when you are hungry, or rather, trying to pray when you are hungry is not as easy as I hoped or thought it would be. Trying to get back into my praying, my silence is interrupted by thoughts. Why am I fasting this year? Why couldn’t I just give up caffeine like last year? I think I still have a yogurt cup in the fridge, and so on. The thoughts almost make me want to give in. Almost. Just when I feel like standing up and walking to the fridge for that yogurt cup, something interesting happens. My mind goes blank. It is cleared of those pesky thoughts and I am left feeling peaceful and focused.

I never really put much thought into the sacrifices of Lent, or why people observe those sacrifices. I actually never really knew Lent at all. Oh Sure! I grew up with a few friends who observed this seemingly odd tradition every year. My mother, who converted from Southern Baptist to Catholic, would always give up chocolate. However, through my observance, I could never really understand the why. I knew there was a connection between Lent and Jesus’ journey in the desert and I knew it always happened forty days before Easter.

Those years between the Sunday Schools of my youth to my reconnection with the church in my adulthood never thought beyond the giving-up-the-chocolate-because-Jesus-wandered-the-desert-for-forty-days moments. I now, thankfully, have a better understanding of what encompasses the season of Lent. Lent, as I understand it, is a season of reflection. A season of preparation of the self for Good Friday and Easter Sunday through various means such as prayer, penitence, self-denial and charity. My combined thoughts lead me to believe these actions are meant to bring us closer to God. So, out of all these means, how did I choose fasting? Each year for the past nine years, I always felt I was missing the mark; not really paying as close attention as I thought I should.

Through initial research, I discovered that fasting is interweaved in this seasonal tradition in various ways and degrees. Further research through consulting family, a few close friends and even a web page or two, helped me come up with a way safe enough for me to observe my sacrifice and private enough for me to not explain to others why I wasn’t eating lunch, or that candy bar. Through my observance came prayer.

Through my prayer came a discipline to really be attentive to my inner feelings and thoughts. Each time I felt a pang of hunger, I would close my eyes and remind myself why I was doing this. I was preparing myself hoping to inch myself closer to God as the days passed, leading up to one of the darkest times in Christianity. Each passing day got a little bit easier, a little clearer. Each day that I reflected and thought and prayed helped me to be strong enough and open enough to understand the ultimate sacrifice Jesus gave. In doing so, I think I even managed to move a couple of inches closer to God.

I do not expect others, this Lenten season, to read my story and follow in my footsteps. I do hope that by reading, they will find their own inner-self and peace in a way that fits them and only them. And when God whispers their name to draw them a few inches closer this season, they will do so with clarity and purpose, with an open mind, an open heart and a better understanding of what Lent means to them.

Peace, Allison

Below is a prayer that I use to start off my time alone with God. You may or may not find it useful during this Lent.

Grant me, o lord my God, a mind to know you
A heart to seek you
Wisdom to find you
Conduct pleasing to you
Faithful perseverance in waiting for you
And hope of finally embracing you.

– Prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas