For Lent, I gave up a house…
Well…this is partly true…
In the Christian tradition, Lent is a time of sacrifice and a time of giving. Every year, while I was growing up, when Ash Wednesday rolled around, my siblings and I would all start to discuss and decide what we were going to give up. Usually they were things like chocolate and after school snacks. While I understood the meaning of lent, these “sacrifices” were usually done out of obligation and then quickly resumed once Easter arrived. Once I was older and living on my own, I actually found myself being completely lazy about my Lenten obligation…until this year arrived.
I find that in sacrificing and giving, most people give from what they feel safe and comfortable with, from what they have in excess. While this isn’t bad, it isn’t the deepest sense of sacrifice. A deeper sense of sacrifice is giving up things that I need. This year, just shortly before Ash Wednesday, my roommates and I received notice that we had to move out of our beautiful home. In short order, I had packed up everything I own, put it in storage and rolled my suitcase to the home of some very generous friends. I had “given up” my house.
While I did not choose this sacrifice for myself, I have adopted it as one of my Lenten offerings and through it, I have been brought to a place of unfathomable peace, focus, and awareness of God’s grace. First of all, even though I am with out a house, I am not with out a warm place to sleep. Through the generosity of my friends, I have been welcomed into a safe and joyful home. I go to bed in peace every night and always wake up with a smile on my face. A feeling that does not seem congruent with being homeless. Secondly, because of the sudden move, the majority of my belongings are now sitting underground in a storage unit. The only things that I have in my immediate possession are the basic necessities for my day to day living: less than half my clothes, a few books, my sewing machine, and the contents of my desk so that I can continue to work and administrate my acting career. Every major distraction has been taken away. As a result, I have had more auditions in the past week than I have had in the past 6 months. All my time is being devoted to the things and people that are important in my life. Thirdly, by being taken out of my last home, I can objectively see all the ways that I took it for granted and became irresponsible with it as a gift from God. Through His grace, I have a chance to start over and become a better steward of the gifts He bestows on me.
No one should ever come out of Lent the same person they were when they entered. The point of sacrificing and giving up is to make a life change. A change that will bring you greater joy and closer to God. It can be scary to sacrifice, but I now believe that only when we give from what we think we need, are we blessed with an over abundance of what we actually need. If you don’t think you need to sacrifice anything for yourself, try sacrificing for someone else. There are a lot of people in this world who want to give things up and don’t know how. And if that seems to difficult, just start with chocolate, next year you can give up your house.
Photo by: Audrey Matos
Creating Character in LA 