The National Catholic Register ran a piece of mine from 2019. Here's a link to the post, What To GIve Up For These 40 Days. I know why I need Lent. I do not suffer well. I don't fast well. I don't forbear well. Everything when I know I'm supposed to be striving for holiness, seems to somehow vex more. Prayer is harder, patience is harder, and forbearance? Ugh. So I'm going to go force myself to pray...until I'm no longer resisting praying.
It's rather like doing the chore until you no longer chafe at the task itself. I can tell you, I'm not humble enough...I'm still struggling and acutely aware of my own desire to do my own will. I should be very grateful, and I keep finding out much to my disappointment and embarrasment in me, I'm not, because the desert is unpleasant and hot and sticky and annoying and full of scratchy things.
Asland must tear away Eustance's Dragon skin, and to do so he tears through to the real Eustance with his claws. It's a brilliant example of how much we cling to sin, and how much we allow it to define us if I think about it. It's disturbing as well, because those claws, like those nails, hurt. Yet we know God is delighted every time we let Him close enough to pull at the sins we cling to, like a child opening the wrapping, He's dying to get to the present, to the gift of us.
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