Lent– in the Christian Church is the period preceding Easter, which is devoted to fasting, abstinence, and penitence in commemoration of Christ’s fasting in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights (6 weeks). It runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday.
Lent is a time when many Christians prepare for Easter by observing a period of fasting, repentance, moderation and spiritual discipline. The purpose is to set aside time for reflection on Jesus Christ – his suffering and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial and resurrection.
So….. for the past 6 years or so now I have been observing Lent. I remember the first time I observed Lent I gave up social Media which was only Facebook for me back then. I decided to do this as I felt I had spent too much time on Facebook and allowed social Media to consume a lot of my time. Another year I did Chocolate. We all like a bit of chocolate and lets say I liked a whole 150g bar! Due to this I decided to abstain from that for the 40 days.
Thereafter I mainly did Chocolate but added a twist to it where I didn’t have Chocolate, Crisps, Biscuits, Cake and basically anything nice, sweet and delicious, all I was allowed to have was either jelly or yoghurt, this was because I had developed what one would call an addiction to all these things, so for me I felt that removing it for 40 days would help me kick the habit!
So fast forward on to 2014 and I wondered what I would do for Lent this year, even whilst in America (which I still very much need to touch on) I was like I still have this sweet tooth but I can’t do the same thing again?! I even wanted to do social media again but for me at this stage in life it is not really much of a sacrifice as I do not depend, rely or go onto social websites as much as I use to, and when I do it is for work related purposes.
So back to Lent 2014. I really wanted to challenge myself and do something I have not done before this year and after a long chat with my sister and sister in-love we decided that we shall indeed go Vegan! Yes I said it VEGAN! For all that know me I absolutely love a challenge no matter how hard it is or how hard it may seem in the long run, so as of Wednesday 5th March I am Vegan for the next 40 days!
Due to the fact that I have gone Vegan I of course still have to cut out the sweet stuff which is very much what I needed to do anyway!
I intend on really trying my hardest to maintain some sort of diary of this whether daily or weekly but it would definitely be interesting for me to look back and reflect on this and I will explain why in the next blog.
Here’s to going Vegan! Wish me luck and I’ll write you soon!
RK. xXx
Roz.K 