lenten fail

Not even two weeks into Lent and I'm already failing at one of my Lenten disciplines - praying the hours.  I intended to have morning, midday and evening prayer every day.  But I keep forgetting about it!  Particularly on the weekend.  I'm better about it during the week when my schedule is more regular, but even then I tend to forget the midday prayer.  I'm certainly praying more than I was before, but I'm not as disciplined as I'd hoped.  Of course, making something a habit is hard work initially...until it becomes a habit...so I shouldn't be surprised that I'm not very good at it.  But there is grace, lots and lots of grace, so I'll keep plodding along.

My other Lenten discipline - making or giving something for someone else every day - is actually easier than I anticipated, but I feel like I'm cheating.  So far I have made baby clothes and food and cards, and I have donated to Kiva and the food pantry.  And I'm also knitting a prayer shawl.  Which I thought would be easy (and is), but I had not counted on how long it would take to knit a prayer shawl.  For me, anyway.  So it is easy for me to knit a few rows every day and cross off my "making or giving something" discipline for the day.  It seems too easy.  But it is within the parameters of the commitment I made! 

Maybe next year I should go the more easily measured route of giving something up for Lent, but these disciplines of time are helping me to be less hap-hazard in my prayer and service.  And maybe by the end of Lent, they'll be a little closer to regular habits.

Oh, and one more Lenten fail: I tried to make that spiral Lenten wreath out of salt dough.  Epic fail!  I tried it as both a spiral and then as a cross (with only 7 candle holes, for each week of Lent), thinking if it were smaller and thicker that maybe then it would work.  Um, no.  Maybe if I had smaller itty-bitty candles, but I could not get the dough to shape right to hold a regular candle.  Oh well.  I think I'll break out some plain votives and just place them in a cross shape on our table!