broken thoughts on lent

I just found the note paper on which I had written down some thoughts on Sunday:

I've been thinking a bit about the season of lent... I grew up in a Catholic country where lent had a different name and my Church didn't commemorate it very intentionally... for now, I am embracing it as a time of directed refocusing. There is not time that is not open for searching our inner life for unhealthy distractions from what is true, good, and beautiful.

It is already the beginning of the second week of lent and I have already not been able to enter into the reflective discipline that I had intended to. It is not too late to get started so, I will enter the new week with renewed purpose...
...it could be seen as a time of cleansing from distractions or a time to discipline our habits. These may be two sides of the same coin of lent for me this year.

There are always distractions and recently I have decided that I am often distracted by good things from even better things. So, this is a season of discerning no "what is bad" but what is the "better thing". The challenge is choosing between good things...
...sometimes the better thing is solitude, other times the best thing is service, other times the best thing is hospitality, other times the best thing is a phone call, and other times the best thing is doing nothing at all.
...consciously stepping away from what distracts me from the "one thing that is necessary" has to be active...