Attending to What Matters Most – My Lenten Sacrifice This Year

I had been trying to determine what I wanted to give up for Lent this year. I love this borrowed practice from the Catholic religion that has helped me spiritually and mentally prepare for Easter through the years. Oh, some years I do it better than others. But when I do, there’s something pretty beautiful to me about situating myself in such a way that brings more depth and meaning to Easter. So, what would be my lenten sacrifice this year? I realized I needed to up my game in attending to what matters most.

Let me tell you how.

Just at the time I was pondering Lent, and Ash Wednesday was approaching, my mom happened to send the most beautifully written article to all her girls.

Attending to Life

It was called Attending to Life, by Elizabeth Oldfield, and it just spoke right to my heart.

It was filled with beautifully laced-together words outlining the question of where we put our attention in life.

What do we attend to?

We have this one, precious life to life. To dig our hands and hearts into and to make our own. Yet often times we find ourselves so distracted by the shiny objects that surround us rather than on the beauty of presence right in front of us. Elizabeth talks about “acedia,” or the apathy and indifference towards life that seeps into such a distracted world. And I loved this part:

Acedia leaves me pinging around like a pinball, a “forsluggish” one sometimes, but also like the monk popping restlessly in and out of her cell hoping for a visitor, or a notification. Too many of my days are lived in this scattered state. Acedia neuters my ability to do good in the world, or even just properly enjoy it.

I don’t want to be a pinball. I want to be a plant.

Somehow that imagery of wanting to be a plant spoke to me. It happened to be at the time I was nurturing my own plants, reaching their way to the sun and warmth of springtime.

Elizabeth says,

The antonym of acedia is attention. The etymological root of attention is stretching toward something, moving intentionally closer. Ideally, I would decide carefully what warrants my attention, which people, ideas, objects or projects have sufficient meaning and value for me to spend a part of my fleeting life attending to them. I would stretch towards those things that will help me be kinder, freer, more just. Things that bring me genuine joy. Primarily, for me, people and relationships, but also meaningful work, meaningful play, beauty, real rest.

My Lenten Sacrifice

I realized I wanted to do just that for my lenten sacrifice. I want to be better at carefully deciding what I attend to. What I would give my attention to. And it was my family. I wanted to, like a firmly rooted plant, “stretch toward them, moving intentionally closer.” And that would mean “sacrificing” my phone when my family was around. Put it in a whole different place.

Wait, what is that you say? You’ve heard that before? Like, a lot of times?

Oh yes, I am no stranger to this practice.

It’s on repeat.

But I’m realizing that’s just how it’s going to be. Because phones are that luring. They make putting the wrong things first so tantalizingly easy-peasy. So easy that you realize an hour after you picked up your phone to look up a recipe that you are now somehow shopping for swimsuits.

Yes, they are sneaky.

And I have to practice distancing myself from all that noise.

Over and over again.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for these last forty days. And I’m so thankful for the avenues and doors that open between me and those I love when I am more present.

Last night I asked Lucy how she would grade me at being more present lately. She thought about it for a minute and decided to give me the thumbs up…a grade of “pretty good.” And I’ll take that because Lucy does not sugarcoat as a rule.

Of course, attending to the most important things will always be something to work on, but I’m so grateful for how Elizabeth Oldfield made me think this season of Lent. May I continue to stay planted and “move intentionally closer” to the things that matter most.

What is In Our Wake?

My wise brother Tal once told me some story about how we need to pay attention to what we leave in our wakes. You know how when you’re on a boat close to other things your wake can create a lot of chaos, everything bobbing up and down in the water behind you. He was talking, I think, about the negative things we don’t want to leave behind. But I like to think about the positive things we can leave behind in our wakes, too.

Because whatever we are doing, we are setting the stage for the future. Life is not just about us, it’s about the ripples we can create.

So I loved these other two quotes from this “Attending to Life” article:

One line lifted from the Psalms always stops my distracted thoughts in their tracks: “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12 KJV).

A modern paraphrase might be: Teach us to take our lives, our time seriously. Help us apply our hearts, turn our attention, orient our desires to wisdom. Help us to really live.

—Elizabeth Oldfield

“Help us to really live.” I feel like we can’t “really live” when we’re so distracted.

And this one:

Research on neuroplasticity and the power of habit only confirms what religions have always taught—the repeated, committed choices we make day after day are the sum of who we become. This means our own Rule of Life, the way we structure our time (whether by accident or design), is one of the most important choices we can make.

—Elizabeth Oldfield

Yes, the way we structure our time is the sum of who we become. I LOVE this talk that asks us to examine what we do in the quiet moments of life. Are they filled with those shiny objects that make our brains ping from one thing to the next? Or can we train ourselves to look up rather than down?

As Lent is nearing an end I know I’ll have to renew my yearning to commit those choices I make each day. The ones that become the sum of who I become. But grateful, once again, for the opportunity Lent gives to exercise freedom in will power, and help us feel better situated for Easter.

I’m setting off with a renewed vow of structuring my time in such a way to remind me to “be that plant.” The one who stretches to the sun.

And to The Son.