We were eating cheese soup the night before Ash Wednesday, the same day this photo was taken, and having a discussion about what we could give up for Lent.
I don’t normally give anything up, instead choosing a journey that usually revolves around writing, the way that I feel draws me closer to God. And what I believe Lent is about. But for some reason, this year I felt the need for a change, a dietary change, one that would ultimately help me in the future because I do know my body is getting older and since I had surgery nearly three years ago, the reset from the anesthesia changed things metabolically.
I have made a lot of changes in our diet– we don’t eat a lot of sugar or bread. Or even meat, but that wasn’t something I ever ate a lot of in the first place. What was it that we could do that would make a difference?
Cheese.
We decided to give up cheese. We chose this because, ironically as we were eating cheese soup, it would involve not work, but creativity. It means we can’t eat at some of our favorite restaurants for another month, but it also means that we can eat more at Saigon City, our favorite Vietnamese place. And Gyros, too.
I heard somewhere on Ash Wednesday, maybe it was the mass I was streaming here, that we should give up something that will be work, that will draw us closer to God.
As I packed up all the cheese from the refrigerator to put it in the freezer, I was joking to myself how we were making this desert journey without the cheese. But it didn’t seem like something insurmountable. Instead, I thought about how it would be creative. I’ve had to think about how to prepare food differently– cream soup instead of cheese soup, what other foods do we like that don’t involve cheese?
That’s when I remembered that I draw closer to God when I am creative. This is a different way of doing that, a way I hadn’t thought about before. A journey that I’m enjoying instead of dreading. The change is a good one. I’ll be happy to eat pizza and huevos rancheros again, however, I’ll also have learned something about myself in the process as I spend 40 days journeying in the desert thinking about how to do something differently.