The biggest challenge of this Lenten challenge has been trying to post on a daily basis.  I am comfortable saying that I have failed in that endeavor.  Yet this failure is a lesson unto itself.

Failure has come in many forms—sometimes time escapes me and I don’t have the energy to try and post, sometimes I am mentally drained from dealing with whatever happened during the day, sometimes inspiration fails to hit, and sometimes I doubt whether what I have written is at all worthwhile.  I think failure due to the first three are tied to my own human fallibility and there are times when I can’t be the perfectionist I would like to be.  But the last area—the one driven by self-doubt—is not only the most controllable it is also the most dangerous.

I sometimes forget that I started this challenge as a way of personally marking the Lenten season.  It was intended to be a spiritual exercise for me to try to keep me connected and contemplating.  I always knew that there would be a public face to this exercise and I had hoped that this would give me a sense of accountability.  However, instead of feeling accountable I feel that I need to be “worth it”, and in worrying about I am preventing myself from stumbling down this journey for better or for worse.

I think that we often don’t take enough time to contemplate the forty plus days that Jesus was alone in the wilderness.  He was coming face to face with his own human mortality and the pain that his death would cause him and those around us.  Forty days are a very longtime and there must have been plenty of time for Jesus to go through all the stages of grieving.  I believe that Jesus felt all those stages powerfully and humanly, from denial to anger, from bargaining to loneliness, and finally to acceptance.  I don’t think Jesus is any less divine if he felt these human emotions.

We don’t think about the forty days as a rollercoaster, we think of it as a linear progression from being cast out to being arrested.  I know that my human life is anything but linear.

So, I have failed to post every day.  And I have failed when I have let my concerns for how other’s will interpret my post get in the way of posting.  I am going to try to do better on both fronts and I will give myself the permission to make up missed days.  I will allow for love to drive this continued journey and remind myself that these forty days are about learning through struggling—not accomplishing.