Giving Up Lent For Lent

I'm the kind of person (the only person?) who listens to Christmas music year round. If I'm anxious or sad, I feel greatly soothed when I pop in Christmas with the Rat Pack or Stars of Christmas or any of the dozen or so Christmas CDs that are omnipresent in my car's armrest. Sure, there's no snow or glow from bulbed trees or any of the holiday ambiance I love, but Frank crooning "The Christmas Waltz" or even--heaven help me--Mariah squealing how badly she wants you under her tree brings me close enough to the cozy enchantment of the Christmas.

I recreate Christmas on soupy summer days and wet spring ones because I never feel more love from God as I do at Christmas time.  It's during Advent that I really feel "saved:" joyously relieved and full of hope because someone has come to make it all better--someone loves me enough to swap my messy world for his pristine heaven. And it's so much easier for me to remember this live in December, when everyone's talking about it. My heart feels fizzy and light every time I hear "the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight" or "for unto you is born this day...a Savior."  I could listen to Linus recite Matthew's verses for Charlie Brown on a 24 hour loop and still click "replay" at the top of hour 25.

Feeling more love in the world, from the world, and for the world during Advent sounds like a good thing...but shouldn't I say the Easter season is the time I most feel God's love?  After all, isn't that when Jesus completes the real work of our salvation? 

For me, Lent has always been a period of mourning, austerity, and something akin to shame. I've made it more about damnation than salvation, which is to say I've made it more about me than about God.  This year I want to try experiencing Lent a new way; I want to look at Christ's trials as acts of love instead of feeling nothing but guilt for his suffering.  Because I feel guilt and shame 364 days/year. (Christmas Eve, of course, is the exception).

You see, I hate myself. And I think that if I hate myself then I don't fully love God.  Instead, I'm challenging, disbelieving the same limitless power of his love that I profess as a Christian.  Cerebrally I know God loves me, but I know it like I know the earth is round. It's a truth that's always existed and a fact I never doubt, but it's a fact whose subtleties I don't perceive. When I drive a car, I hug the curve of the earth, but don't feel like I'm moving in a circle or an arc. When I sin I know that its violent punishment has already been served, but I nonetheless abuse myself for committing it. In my mind there loops a ticker of faults and failings and countless things I regret saying.  That ticker gets significantly longer every day and runs over a chorus of, "Jennifer, you are disgusting. I hate you. God, I'm sorry I'm so disgusting. I hate how disgusting I am. Please forgive me." I commit a sin even as I confess my sin.  In sum, mine is a confiteor in need of a confiteor.

Self-hate, I think, is my biggest sin. And by that I mean it is--at this moment in my life--the tallest wall separating me from God. It's entirely self-constructed and keeps me from both embracing him and becoming more like him. To be more like God, I have to love me, too. 

All this is to say that my project for Lent 2012 is to love in myself a few of the things God loves in me.  It will be a kinder, gentler penitence that demands some extent of mercy on myself. It feels wholly uncomfortable and out of place this time of year, but tempered with fasting, abstinence, and charity, I hope to fully feel the love that prompted Christ to willfully suffer for me. Then come Easter morning, I can sing Alleluia with complete joy.  And when we sing the word out of season, I'll be filled with the same cozy enchantment of Advent.  It just might become a new Christmas song to sing unto the Lord.