Moving Forward - Ash Wednesday

It's a new year, a new liturgical season and like many people I've come up with some resolutions for 2011 (and now Lent.) I'm moving past the pain of 2010 and taking each new day as it comes. I'm still struggling, but then again, aren't we all? Who can't find some sorrow or tragedy in their life to spend every waking hour anquishing over? I see people with so many reasons to be happy, hunched over and scrutched up with bitterness because they allow the bad to overshadow the good. The storm clouds may be heavy, but there is always a silver lining and I'm reaching for it. So here goes; my resolutions are as follows

Remain Positive. Rebuild Faith. Restore Hope. Reaffirm My Belief in Miracles.

It's a mission statement, motivational statement and slogan all in one. If my resolution was only to lose 10lbs by May, I'd have broken it already. The goal this year is to not be defined by the tragedies in my life.

And now Lent, how do I take this mindset into the penitential and sacrificial season leading up to Easter? Here is where I really start working on rebuilding my faith, a faith that has sustained me but yet been greatly shaken. Thank God I have built this faith on the rock of the true Church and not the shifting sand of my past wishy-washy beliefs. It is nose to the grindstone time. Fasting, prayer, avoiding worldly distractions-those are the general goals. I like to keep the specifics between me and God.

I hope to come out of desert on April 24th with a true feeling of hope; a value I am so quick to cast aside nowadays, fearful of being hurt again. May God carry us all through this Lenten season.

How shall we have the means to help our brother who is in need? We can do without those unnecessary things which become habits, cigarettes, liquor, coffee, tea, candy, sodas, soft drinks and those foods at meals which only titillate the palate. We all have these habits, the youngest and the oldest. And we have to die to ourselves in order to live, we have to put off the old man and put on Christ. That it is so hard, that it arouses so much opposition, serves to show what an accumulation there is in all of us of unnecessary desires. -DD