The similarities of sin and chocolate

Having been Catholic my entire life, when I think of Lent, fasting just kind of follows naturally. But in truth, I never put a lot of thought into abstaining from meat on Fridays (in fact I have probably forgotten about abstaining more times than I could count in my 23 years) or into fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. It was a rule I followed. I’m not sure I really got the point behind it.

Over my years I have also given up many things for Lent. I can still remember the year I successfully gave up chocolate for the whole 40 days — including Sundays — and was congratulated by my parents with an Easter Sunday gift of pogs representing every football team in the NFL. Oddly, I was very excited about it. Then there was the trend of doing something more rather than giving up. (One Lent I resolved to make my bed daily — unsuccessfully.)

I guess I’ve come to the point of combining these two lines of thought into giving up and trying to do more. For this year’s season that translates to a pretty restrictive fast for the whole of Lent (not just Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) and continuing my pursuits of putting God first in my life.

Twelve days into the journey, I would say I’m doing pretty well. Clearly the former Lenten resolution is more easily measurable than the latter, but all the same I think I am on the right track. But that’s not to say that I haven’t had wavering thoughts.

Without getting into all the details of my fast … to say the least sugar is off limits. Well, just in case you didn’t notice, Thursday was Valentine’s Day. And Valentine’s Day means candy and chocolate, especially among the elementary school crowd I hang out with daily at the Boys and Girls Club (but there were also a substantial amount of sweets that morning at the senior center).

Being utterly surrounded by chocolate and sugar in all its varied forms begins to make a girl think: What would one little bite of fudge hurt? Theoretically it probably wouldn’t hurt anything … except for every idea behind the fast I am doing. Immediately a parallel thought process popped in my head.

Can we not tend to use the same justification when it comes to sin? What would one lie or one unkind thought or a little bit of jealousy hurt? But ultimately that little lie or thought or jealousy would be my one bite of fudge on Valentine’s Day that would undo all the careful and thoughtful work I had been doing up to that point.

Just a little something to think about. :)

Oh and don’t worry — I resisted the sweet treats. This way Easter will be that much sweeter.