Lent

this year starts February 13th of this year.

Ma chere amie, Sarah, clarified for me what part of the purpose of fasting and for Lent is for: there's something you have to give up doing, for fasting it's obviously certain kinds of food, and sometimes it can be other things such as watching television or going on the computer.  That's great, taking yourself away from those things.

But it's all pointless if you don't take the time that you would take for those mundane things to pray instead - and that's what fasting and/or Lent is really about - more prayer, more communication with God, more heart-to-heart talks to him, an almighty being yet also a person - a loving father and a caring friend.

So that was a light bulb that needed to go on today, and honestly I feel a bit more enlightened.  For me this year, I definitely plan to cut back a whole bunch of tumblr time.  I remember deleting my other photography tumblr to switch to my 'school' one (which has become a sort of 'whatever' tumblr) - and now I have three total - one to post random stuff on, one to display my wanderlust, and one to share medium format photography with other talented professional or amateur photographers from all parts of the Earth.  Cutting down on my travel tumblr will be easy.  I guess for my medium format tumblr, I'll just deal with the posting of photographs from flickr and never have to sign in for a while.  As for my 'personal tumblr', I really need to just cut down my time on that one - but I have met quite a few other brothers and sisters in Christ recently and I like seeing posts related to Christianity.  This is sort of off-topic yet related - but with God, it's either all or nothing.  So I guess for Lent this year I'll just not sign on to any of my tumblrs at all.  After Lent, I'll try my best to limit my time on those three tumblrs... we'll see how it goes.

I remember what I did for Lent last year was to step away from any kinds of medicines - natural, chemical, man-made, acupuncture-related - to heal my stomach because something was very, very wrong with it.  Before and after every meal, I would pray, pray, pray that God would allow my stomach to be able to handle the food I was about to consume.  I would also pray that perhaps God could find me some natural remedy (different from natural medicine!) that could possibly help my stomach heal.  My friend Melanie was always talking about how healthy probiotic yogurt is for the digestive system - so I decided to give it a try - eating a diary product with live cultures of bacteria to heal my body.  And it worked!  To this day, though, I have to eat probiotic yogurt every once in a while to regulate my digestive system - but it's a lot more healthier than eating all these pills every day.