Lent, Lent, Lent

No.  I'm not Catholic.  Yes.  I observe Lent.  For as long as I can remember, my family has done our own little Lent thing.  For those of you who don't know what Lent is, I'll explain it to you.

Traditionally, Lent, in the Christian tradition at least, begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts until Holy Saturday (right before Easter) - forty days (the Sundays in this period don't count, because they represent "mini Easters").  The forty days represent the amount of time (in the bible) that Jesus spent in the desert before his ministry where He was tempted my Satan.  The purpose of Lent is to prepare yourself through prayer, and specifically sacrifice of something, for the commemoration of the death and resurrection of the Savior, or basically, Easter.

The practice of Lent was virtually universal in Christianity until the Protestant reformation in the 1500's.  Some Protestant churches don't observe Lent, but many still do, such as Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Anglicans.

Basically the way we observe Lent in my family isn't really for the reasons I described above.  As the LDS church doesn't observe Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday or Holy Saturday, it's really not for any of these reasons that my family does Lent.  The reason we do Lent is because it's a good opportunity to take something out of your life that you don't need or that is taking time and energy away from something better that you could be doing.  One year, my mom gave up soap operas, and since then, she's been soap opera free! Silly, I know, but that's just an example.

So this year, dear readers, for Lent, I am giving up two things: not running, and sugar.

That means I'm not eating sugar, and I'm going to run.  I know, worded strange, but... it works...

And for those of you thinking "why would you give up sugar, it's not like you eat it all the time anyway..." I tell you, this statement may be true, but it's more of a motivation to get me TO run.  I know the healthier I eat (even if it seems ridiculous to some of you) the more motivated I will be to run five days a week.  I know myself and how I think and how I work, trust me, it must be done.

And so, I shall blog about my Lent journey.  Frustrations, progress, but not my failures, because there will be NO failures.  Gosh dang it!

So gear up, I'ma be a cross country runner before long.  Shazam.

Peace.