NaturallyResilient

About

I was raised Southern Baptist and never knew much about Lent. To me it was something weird the Catholics down the street did. Then when I was on my own, I joined the Methodist Church: it seemed to fit my beliefs better. All of a sudden I was confronted with all of these terms that I had always associated with Catholics, one of which was Lent.

Every year I would hear discussions of what some one was giving up for Lent. I always thought it was strange. Why would I give something up? I was struggling as it was, trying to believe that God wanted us to live in abundance!
Here is my train of thought. God is all powerful (check, I have always believed that). God is all knowing (check again). God is abundance (not as strong of a check, but hey I’ll go with it). God wants us to live in abundance (ok, this is where the struggle begins).

I have come a long way from when I thought that God wanted us to give everything away and live under a bridge but it was still a struggle. I knew that giving anything up for Lent would just set me back in my struggle. To me giving anything up was more of a slap in the face of God than a honoring of God. How do you feel when you try to give something to someone and they won’t take it? Think about the last time you gave someone a compliment and instead of saying ‘thank you’ they negated it by not accepting it or by making light of it. How did that make you feel? Did you want to give them another compliment any time soon? I am not saying that God has human emotions and motives but that is what I have to work with.

This year I am looking at it a little different. I am going to honor God and myself by giving something up. The reason this is going to honor God and myself is because I do not need this and it is really hurting me in the long run. What I am giving up is Excedrin!

You were expecting something a little grander weren’t you?

I admit, I am addicted to Excedrin and I know that many of the daily headaches I get are Excedrin induced. I got addicted to it when I was in college (30 years ago) and came home with a bad headache and tried Excedrin and was amazed that my headache was actually gone in 20 minutes! Nothing ever took my headaches away before! Then every time I started to get a light headache I would take an Excedrin because I was afraid the headache would grow into a migraine if I did not do something.

Every once in a while I will get off the Excedrin then a migraine would occur and I couldn’t stand it and would take an Excedrin and finally get rid of it. But then I would be back on taking Excedrin everyday.

This time will be the longest stretch that I would have given Excedrin up (that is if I make it). I survived without Excedrin before I can survive without it again. I have a headache.