Sugar-free Lent

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
~Psalm 119:103

We are now more almost 3 weeks into Lent and I have been meaning for awhile to post about how this year I decided to give up sugar. I'm still eating fruit and drinking milk, but I'm basically not eating any desserts or sugary snacks or drinking any juices or sodas. Lent is supposed to be a time where you give up something in order to focus more on God and all that Christ gave up for you as well as practicing the spiritual discipline of fasting. Going without sugar has definitely been a big challenge for me! From Valentine's Day gifts to the customary Friday donuts in the office, I feel like I have been surrounded by sugar! But each day that I make it through without eating any sugar feels like a victory as sweet as any chocolate bar. It's the taste of having accomplished something difficult, it's the taste of perseverance. Too often we don't challenge ourselves and we look for the easy or lazy way to complete a task. Yet there is a satisfaction that comes from completing something difficult that you ultimately learn more from. Right now, I am still waiting to hear more about if I will be able to go to Lausanne. It is hard for me to be patient, just like it is hard for me to not eat sugar, but I am confident that it will be worth the wait. It will be sweet to look back and see God's perfect timing in all of this!

Rhiannon and Danielle, my Starbucks buddies!

On Friday, I went to Starbucks with my sister and her friend before taking them to school. It's something we do every once in a while, but this was the first time since Lent had started. I'm not much of a coffee drinker and I usually get a hot chocolate. This day, I had to order a sugar-free hot chocolate and from the very first sip I could tell the difference. The imitation sugar just wasn't the same! Of course, I wasn't expecting it to be, but that got me thinking about how many times we settle for things in our lives that are imitations for what's real. We make things, people, and routines our idols in hopes of being happy and fulfilled and are left empty. We settle for the imitation instead of the real thing, the real hope and peace that comes only from God. This was especially hit home for me this past weekend when I participated in a tour with my church group of a Buddhist temple, a Muslim mosque, and a Hindu temple. Everywhere we went it was just so clear how these people have been blinded by the enemy's promises of happiness. They have accepted sugar-free hot chocolate as the real thing, the answer to their thirst. They do not even know that there is a drink that tastes even sweeter and is even more satisfying. They won't know until someone offers them real hot chocolate. 

How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard ? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

~Romans 10:14

What is sweeter than fellowship? Chipotle with some of my friends from Mary Washington IV on a recent visit.