Post-Lent Debrief

I’ve been slow in returning from Lent for a number of reasons.  Chiefly, I have been attempting to process the experience in a healthy manner.

Lent is not for the faint of heart.  

One of the inevitabilities of the Lenten season is that you will most likely fail, or at least falter, in completing the 40 days of fasting with a “perfect score”.  If one is doing Lent in a substantial way, then one is confronting a sin or habit that is connected to a deeply seated issue;  “…the sin that so easily entangles,” as it were.  

If you tend towards a toxic perfectionism, as I do, then it is very easy to get knocked on your butt somewhere between one to three times by the monkey on your back and consider yourself a failure.  It gets hard and the temptation is to give up.  I’m not sure where this idea comes from, that because it’s hard we are failing or incompetent.  That notion is the exact thing I’ve lived with my entire life…up until now.

For the past year I have gone to the gym more consistently that I ever have before.  Every day is hard.  Every day is a struggle and a trial.  Every day ends with exhausted, shaking muscle groups, maybe some pain, and wondering in the moment why I’m doing this at all.  I asked one of the coaches there if it ever gets easier.  She gave me a pitying look, shook her head, and said, “It doesn’t get easier.  You just get stronger.”  We are always adding on more weight, doing more reps, setting the treadmill at a higher angle; we purposely make it so that it won’t get easier in order to improve.  It isn’t for the faint of heart.  It is for those with a goal, with drive, with desire, with a reason lodged in their hearts beyond the immediate moment.

Paul’s letters tend to be replete with language and imagery about this struggle.  We are training in and out of season, like someone who wants that prize of a laurel crown beyond all other things.  We wrestle, we run, we practice, we suffer, we endure, we grit our teeth and carry on recognizing that x produces y which turns into z.  

If Jesus is just an accessory, if Christianity is just a “lifestyle” then of course when it gets difficult we wonder where God is, wonder if any of it is true, wondering if it’s really worth it.  When we know the reason, understand the cost, and have settled in our hearts precisely what the Truth and the Real and the Good are…when we are rooted in Him (clinging to Him as our foundation, drawing nutrients from Him alone) we can suddenly weather anything.  Somehow we believe a lack of struggle means success.  We tell ourselves that we know when things are going well as a follower of God because trials and tribulations are absent…which is directly counter to the scriptures, as it turns out.

Throughout my Lenten experience, I have had the image of Saint George in my mind.

For those who aren’t Catholic or English, since he’s the patron saint of England, Saint George was a knight called upon to slay a dragon that was terrorizing the countryside.  There are many differing accounts of what he did or didn’t do and how he went about it.  

At its core is the tale that Saint George went to confront dragon, and was blessed by heaven and/or Michael the Archangel to kill the dragon.  Many accounts say that even with the blessing of heaven he was mangled beyond belief and died, having fulfilled his mission.  He was then healed or resurrected and lived happily ever after marrying the virgin who was being sacrificed who happened to be a princess, blah blah blah.  I could write a thesis on the important impact of the tale of Saint George, but I’ll only mention a couple things here.

Firstly, the dragon existed.  The dragon killed people, burned the countryside, and was an oppressive force deliberately exploiting the people.  And God could have removed it Himself with a snap of his fingers…but didn’t.  He chose a man to take on the evil.  This is why Saint George is considered a stand-in for Michael the Archangel.  When Satan and his angels are cast down in Revelation 12 it isn’t God Himself who defeats directly him.  It isn’t even Jesus.  God chooses gives that fight to a created being to be the one to engage with and defeat the Father of Lies, the Accuser of the Brethren, the Fallen One for all time.  

Could God cause our sufferings, our struggles, our bad habits and the like to completely disappear with a snap of His fingers?  Absolutely.  But most often He leads us through the struggle, points to the dragon that is wrecking havoc in our own hearts and seems to say, “Take it down.  I’m with you.”  

Secondarily interesting to me is that Saint George fights the dragon.  I know that sounds like a beyond obvious thing to point out but understand this.  Even with the blessing of heaven, it was a struggle, and he nearly died or did die altogether.  How often do we presume that the way these battles with external or internal dragons should only involve a saunter up to the dragon, a wink and glimmering smile to the virgin being sacrifice, and then the dragon should just impale itself on our sword, the arterial spray landing everywhere except on our armor?  

When I think about battles with dragons mythologically, it maps on to real life experience with an aptness that is startling to me.  It’s a knock down, drag out fight.  The man doing what is right sees the beast before him as an existential threat and is willing to endure any trial or effort to take it down.  He will be bruised, battered, punctured, sweating, his sword arm faltering with fatigue.  The odds are impossible and unlikely, but still his is convinced that to take it down, even if it costs him everything, is a fair trade.

And this is the theme of Lent, as far as I’m concerned.  

We do not ignore the dragon.  We do not pacify the dragon.  It fights back.  By then end of it, we will not be a knight in shining armor.  It will be dented, rent, punctured, and stained with mud, blood, and sweat.  

The knight in shining armor has never been tested in battle.  That knight is a poser.  

It is the limping knight, the one missing a limb, the one with the crooked smile due to a too often broken jaw that is the wiser and more heroic knight.  

After Lent I realized that just engaging our “dragons” changes us for the better.  

To be honest, if a perfect score was what was required to be successful, then it would provide no benefit.  I would have been seen as a failure.  

I took the time to scrutinize and explore my issues with tech.  I was surprised how quickly I went back to it and my condition was, externally seeming, the same as before Lent.  I’ve taken steps now, however, that I haven’t taken before.  I still check my phone first thing in the morning but 1) I’m intensely disgusted by the behavior and 2) I’ve stopped using my phone as an alarm clock which keeps it out of my bedroom.  The first point was hardly an issue before Lent.  The second point is a tool I didn’t have before in my war with this particular dragon.  

It will not get easier until the dragon is dead.  

Even then there may be scars and injuries.  

Slaying the dragon is the goal, and yet not the entire point.  

Even blessed by heaven, as we are my Brothers and Sisters, the success is not in the ease.