Forgoing The Seven-Week Plan

This morning, while cleaning off my nightstand so that it might reflect a Lenten simplicity, I found an old notebook. And while flipping through it, I found a page dated October 7, 2016. The rather ambitious title of the list was "5 Year Plan -- 2021".

Darwin and I had clearly been blue-skying about the future here. In twelve months I was supposed to sell Stillwater to a publisher; in two years to clean up an older novel for submission and start drafting new story ideas. Darwin was to be presenting at professional pricing conferences within two years; within three years he would write a popular book on the subject and self-publish it as an experiment with marketing and pricing strategies; by 40 he would be promoted to a vice president at work.

On July 8, 2017 -- nine months and one day later -- Paul was born.

Some of our plans have simply not happened. I was hard at work on revising Stillwater even on the very day I made the list; an agent was even looking at it. Once I started morning sickness, everything that was unessential fell by the wayside -- including writing. Nothing like perpetual weariness and nausea to make you reassess what's actually crucial to day-to-day survival. Darwin has not written his popular pricing book, nor is he yet a vice president (though he's still only in his second month of being 40, so who knows?).

Some things did happen, differently than we expected. Darwin spoke at the conference for the pricing society within one year, not two, and he's presenting again this spring. I haven't cleaned up my older novel, but I did write my Hallmark Christmas story/King Lear mashup last Christmas, and we're planning to use that novella as our experiment in self-publishing next Christmas.

And some things were simply not on our horizon, including a bouncy 20 month-old who has a fluff of naughty curls on the top of his head, who can intelligently verbalize his needs to me (as long as those needs are cheese), and can greet and dismiss people with the best of them. Even as I type, he's padding around the living room in a footy dino sleeper, intently dismantling a Transformer. There is, in fact, no finer fellow, only we didn't know that when we were making our five-year plan as if we could predict every good thing.

It's easy to overplan Lent: to make lists of all the sacrifices one ought to be making, and the virtuous practices to incorporate into daily life. I should give up social media, but I should also fast two days a week, and cut out sugar, and no more second helpings, and also I should get up early and read a devotional book and go to daily mass and write every day and spend ten minutes in meditation. All good things, sure. But the penitence of Lent is penitence as preparation. It's a stripping away of what's inessential, so that by Easter my soul is ready to be filled and consumed by the glory of the Resurrection. Committing to a sacrifice as a discipline is a good thing, but the Church does already prescribe a communal discipline: fasting and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday; abstinence on Fridays. For me, trying to pile on the practices becomes a matter of control, not of spiritual growth.

In past Lents, I've seen a progressive stripping-away as I move closer to the Triduum. Even without planning it, it seems right to add this practice or cut out this food or habit with each passing week, as the reality of Good Friday draws nearer. Forty days out, the Passion seems so distant. During Holy Week, it's almost impossible not to be in a state of anticipation, where everything unnecessary falls away. And each week suggests its own penance or practice, whether I've planned something or not. The essential thing is to be ready to do the thing placed before me each day. "Ears open to obedience you gave me," as the psalm says in Morning Prayer.

Then I said, behold I come,
To do your will, O God, is my delight.