i’ll scream for ice cream

Anyone who has been in a homegroup/bible study with me over the past couple of years has learned that I grew up Catholic and as an adult, I’ve had some pretty negative feelings towards the religion. Most of these were rooted in a combo deal of lack of understanding purpose and reason for the many ceremonial facets of the religion and a series of poor experiences with catholic/Christian hypocrisy. Regardless, as soon as I was old enough, I rejected every part of the religion.

I really don’t intend on using this post as a venue to harp on all the reasons I’m thankful that I was freed of Catholicism. Rather, I wanted to talk about one small part of the religion that I was reminded of this morning. I have a coworker who is catholic and she was telling me how she and her kids are giving something up for Lent this year. (You can learn about lent here.)

When I was a kid, lent was something my family always recognized. We’d all give something up during lent, the period from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Usually it’d be some sort of food item or maybe a video game or favorite toy or something. As a kid, I never really understood why I was giving something up…other than the obvious peer and parental pressure to concede with the crowd. I never took it seriously. I’d give up something really specific so I could have something similar (ie: I’ll give up this specific brand of chocolate chip cookies but I’ll still be able to eat thin mints because I didn’t give up cookies in general). I thought I was so smart. Trying to outwit God and all.  Yeah, that never works out well, does it?

The wikipedia article I linked above describes the 40 days of lent (sans Sundays) as a parallel between the 40 days Moses spent on the mountain, the 40 days/nights of rain Noah had on the ark, and a whole lot of other “40″ parallels. I’m not sure that I buy into any of that because I firmly believe that it’s about relationship and not religion.

So why am I blogging about lent if I really don’t give a hoot? Well, when my coworker mentioned it this morning, something in me just screamed “ice cream!” I’ve been trying so hard to lose weight and after losing 45lbs, I’ve just hit a wall. Not a physical plateau like the one I struggled with around Christmas. This is more of a “I’m being selfish and reckless and over-indulgent and I’m tired of depriving myself because I think I’m so great that I should be able to eat without ramifications” sort of thing.

I started weight watchers in the first place because I wanted to try real hard to eradicate the overindulgent lifestyle I was living. I gave up tanning, manis, pedis, got on a budget, joined weight watchers, and even got a second job. Somewhere along the line, I’ve started to regress. This is typical for me, I’ve grown comfortable in the success and now I think I’m above it. Like, I don’t need the help and structure anymore. It reminds me of this discussion I had with my brother when he was telling me how part of his last relapse was because he just didn’t invest the time in his recovery so he’d start messing up with small things and get away with them and then started moving towards bigger things. No, I’m not using drugs, but I moved from one bad meal a week to two, to three, to…well, now I’m not even counting points. The horror.

So I figured, why not go with the childhood familiarity of giving something up for lent? What do I have to lose besides a couple of pounds? I’m not doing it for religion. I’m just doing it because I know that I need to focus on discipline and I think this is a good structure for me to start. So, I’m giving up ice cream during the time of lent.

And, let’s be real, success for me on this one will come only through Christ…and maybe the spontaneous combustion of every cold stone in the area.

~ by jenchall on February 25, 2009.