Day 31: Are We There Yet?

Remember on Wednesday when I said "the fasting has become second nature"?  Well, I lied.   Today was the roughest day of the week by far for three reasons:  food, food and prayer.

Today was the retreat for our senior class.  I didn't have much time to stop by today because I was covering classes for a colleague who was working the retreat.  But wouldn't you know, the only time I did have to drop by to see how things were going was during lunch time.  Actually, it was before lunch time . . . I arrived just in time to help get the baked potato bar set up.  I normally have not been very hungry at lunch time lately, but I am also not normally around food midday either.  After that, the rest of the day was a real grind.  Making dinner at home only made matters worse and I found myself watching the clock from about 4:45 until 7:56 (recall as well that today is the first day with 13 hours of daylight).

The whole day was just weird.  I felt out of sync from start to finish and that made itself manifest in my prayer as well.  Being in a different classroom all day, missing my usual time for prayer in the middle of the day and just generally being tired contributed to a day that was, well . . . blah.  Sure, I said little prayers throughout the day, but I did not take the 30 minute chunk of time that I have already grown accustomed to and I really missed it.  Missing that structured prayer time just threw the entire day out of whack.

Most days I am eager to sit down and write about the day's experience.  But this was the first day through all of Lent that I had no idea what to jot down. So this is what you get.  I just told myself to be honest about the experience and to write what I feel, regardless of how dull it turned out.

But perhaps that is today's lesson . . . God is present even in the humdrum dullness of a cloudy, gray, unremarkable day.  A life of faith isn't just about the great days when I border on a state of spiritual euphoria.  And it isn't just about the horrible days when the only one there is to turn to is God.  It's mostly about the places in between that are monotonous, humdrum and altogether tedious . . . the times when I ask, "Are we there yet?"