Failing at Our Lenten Disciplines

On Friday, a group of us at work talked about how draggy we feel during the first week of Daylight Savings Time.  It's tough to lose that hour.

And here we are, about mid-way through Lent.  As always, I feel a bit draggy, a bit like I'm failing.  As I look at the Lenten season of past years, I realize that I've often felt that way.  Why?

My latest blog post on the Living Lutheran site explores this question.  Here are some quotes to whet your appetite:

"Do we fail at our Lenten disciplines for the same reasons we fail at our resolution making and keeping each January? Do we try to do too much? Do we set ourselves up for failure?"

"We have lived in the land of self-loathing long enough. Hopefully, we chose our Lenten disciplines because we wanted to become closer to God. We didn't choose them so that we'd have additional reasons to hate ourselves. That's not the emotion that God desires to see."

"It’s good to remember what many a behavioral psychologist could have told us from the start: We learn more from failure than we do from success, and with most change, it takes some failure before we find success."