Lenten Living in the Midst of Fatigue

I spent time talking to an old friend and former China teammate last week. As we reminisced and caught up, I asked her if she had plans for Lent this season with her family. Before she answered, she immediately went back to her experience of Lent in China describing how hard it felt to lean into Lent with intention when daily life overseas already felt like and ongoing season of Lent. 

I immediately understood her sentiment in that lament. We called it “cultural fatigue.” There were many joys concerning cross-cultural living, but there were many challenges too that made each day stressful yet faith-growing in mutuality.

Living cross-culturally meant there were daily exasperations just lying underneath the surface of daily life. One could live without ever noticing it, but the body responds by being easily fatigued, experiencing limitations perhaps you hadn’t in your passport country, constant stress or anxiety that could easily explode, and for some, a mild-ongoing depression. This constant flow of fatigue pulsed like an electrical current underneath every day activities making the threshold for unmet expectations, loss, stress, study, work and family interaction narrower. Basically each day you’d start with a cup half-full; a shortened capacity for daily life because your brain and body had filled the rest with surviving in a new environment before your day started. Our survival response is to push through and ignore our body, but that path usually ends in burnout, despair, or turning to vices to cope. But Jesus proposes a second way, “take my yoke” and learn to lean into me for help and sustaining grace and let me give you life in abundance.

Lenten Living is Learning to Lean on Jesus

I recently heard, in more than one place, that Lent is supposed to be hard. It is difficult because you are meant to fail. Lent is a season where we come to terms with our finite ability to do anything apart from Christ, it reveals our vulnerability, inability and frailty; our general humanity and need of a help. 

For example, if during Lent you choose to fast from a meal or excess TV watching, it will be hard, you will want to give up.  When one decides to break from a comfortable, survival-mode of living in Lent to pursue spiritual wholeness it is never easy, in fact, it’s not meant to be accomplished out our own willpower. That’s the point of Lent–to let go, and allow Jesus to sustain you in the task at hand.

Lent is the season we admit we are not all powerful, life is hard, the world is imperfect and so are we. Lent is when we allow our hearts to be open to what our soul longs for most—wholeness and transformation, so that we may experience life with refreshment and new energy that is not of our own making.

Lenten fasting, almsgiving, and intentional prayer are opportunities to embrace being uncomfortable, face our incompetencies, bad habits or poor use of time and begin saying yes to Jesus as savior, sustainer, friend, helper, and guide. 

Right Now Life Feels Like an Ongoing Lenten Experience

Reconsidering my cross-cultural experience as a form of Lent has reminded me that the “cultural fatigue” was the refining fire that pushed me nearer to Jesus, revealing my deep need to depend on God for daily life, and sometimes survival.

This remembering, has helped me name something I’ve been sensing as of late in preparing for Lent that I have not been able to pinpoint until that conversation with my friend. I’ve been feeling “cultural fatigue” again, but this time it’s “covid-fatigue.” It’s been hiding just beneath the surface and causing a resistance to enter Lent, and honestly it has been stealing an “UMPH” from life. Maybe you can resonate? As of late, our environment feels like a hot tub bubbling with fear, worry, confusion, mistrust, and loss due to Covid and its repercussions. We’ve all be touched in some way and it has affected all our relationships– I think it’s fair to say, something about life feels different now.

This year, it may seem too much of a stretch to fast, give alms, or even pray for a concentrated time because it feels like we’ve been living in an ongoing season of Lent, much like my friend felt in China. Lament, mourning, fasting and feeling pressed too thin are too “normal” now and we just want Easter. In response to this, I say, that’s okay, you’re not alone.

Let Lent Be the Gift of Letting Go

The beauty of Lent is that we start as ash; feeling broken and perhaps exhausted, but we assuredly arise into Easter with new life–a new creation of beauty and wonder. What we give up in Lent is what we are not meant to carry in the first place; our will, our fatigue, our pride, our tears, our brokenness and our stress. I believe we can view Lent as a fast from our need to control and make sense of life so that we can spend time letting Jesus heal our wounds, hear our desires, tend to our tears and love us as we are. It’s a season to shed our old skin, to let it go, and be refined toward newness of life.

You may not even notice the toll “covid-fatigue” has taken on your soul and energy. In fact, your burden may not be Covid related. We are also journeying with several friends fighting cancer, which is difficult. The point is, wherever you are feeling less than or over-extended and broken, I encourage you to graciously ask yourself: What do I need from Jesus this Lent? What will renew my soul, refresh my spirit, and allow me to experience the tenderness of Jesus in the midst of what’s going on in my life?  What do I need to shed in the season of Lent in order to experience newness of life? How can I be with others who need compassion this Lent?

Experience A Gracious Lent

I pray God meets you in the answer. A gracious answer may mean fasting from what is not proving beneficial to your relationship with Jesus and others. It may mean letting go of loss and practicing lament. It may be inviting the practice of gratitude as your prayer. It may even be taking up a hobby that you once loved or want to learn to feel human again. It could mean seeking a “community of tenderness¹” for healing. Wherever you are as Lent approaches, this is the season you have permission to start saying “yes” to Jesus. Invite him to be with you in the ashes or desert. Let him guide you through the valley into green pastures.

May Isaiah’s proclamation remind you of who is found in the gift of Lent and what he promises you:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,

and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
    instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
    instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
    instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    a planting of the Lord
    for the display of his splendor.

Isaiah 61: 1-3

Lent: Is the liturgical season of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer proceeding Easter. The season lasts 46 days, with Sundays being small feast days (a break from fasting) while we practice 40 days of fast as a remembrance of Jesus’ fast in the desert. Lent begins after Shrove Tuesday, on Ash Wednesday which falls on March 2, 2022. If you would like more information on Lent, spiritual practices, ways to fast, give alms, pray or book recommendations, please reach out below. I’d be happy to talk with you more. Learn more about Lent : Journey to the Cross. Click here for a Lenten reflection.

₁ Referencing Fr. Boyle, SJ of Homeboy Ministries. Podcast: Things Not Seen: https://www.thingsnotseenradio.com/shows/1803b-boyle