Lenten Disciplines

I broke my Lenten discipline this week.  Intentionally.  Knowingly.  Justifying to myself that it would be worth it.  It really wasn't.

This year, for something different besides giving up junk food or adding a daily devotional (which I've been reading regularly since before Christmas so I didn't need to re-instill the practice this Lent), I decided to give up listening to the radio in my car and instead listen only to Christian CD's.  I spend a lot of time driving by myself.  It's 35 minutes from my house to the church; 40 minutes from the sitter's house.  A lot of the music I was listening to was not life-giving (not necessarily life-draining, but not improving my mood or inspiring me to allow grace for my fellow drivers, either).  I had to go dig out my old Christian CD's, many of which I hadn't listened to in years and most of which were bought in college or shortly thereafter. 

I haven't missed the radio in my car.  There were a few times early on when I really wanted to turn on the radio and instead reluctantly put in another CD of praise music.  Some CD's have been pleasant to rediscover.  Others, I rediscovered the reason why I stopped listening to them.  One unexpected side effect has been that I've been annoyed when I'm somewhere else, like at the store, and the radio is playing.  At times, I really don't want to listen to ANY radio! 

However, this past Monday I was in my car by myself earlier than usual and I knew that a certain station would have the traffic, news, and weather at the top of the hour, which was in five minutes, so I turned it on.  I used to love to listen to the early morning radio show, it was one of the highlights of leaving for seminary each day at 7:30 a.m.  Plus, I always knew I'd get a brief weather and news report.  Well, on Monday I was reminded that the radio show hosts have changed; I had forgotten.  And the news reports aren't necessarily the pieces of news that I find the most interesting.  And the weather, well, it was raining.  And it was going to rain all day.  I turned off the radio after that and put back on a CD.  I'm guessing that after Easter this year I'll listen less to my CD's, but I'll listen more often to the oldies' radio station (which now includes the 80's!).  That music at least puts me in a good mood.