Lent, We are halfway there..... Have I seen growth yet?

Here I am realizing I am behind on my goal of weekly blogging, listening to Crowder's  All We Sinners on Spotify trying to get a little motivated to write this blog post.

We are 22 days into Lent and the challenge of 40acts that I've taken on and I am trying to analyze the last few weeks to see if anything has changed and if I've seen personal growth or not.  It's really hard to self analyze when you tend be a constant procrastinator and not want to look inward.

In Crowder's song All We Sinners (You Tube video of song with lyrics) he writes:

The crimson river, like a flood
Came washing over all of us
It swallowed sin and death right up
And all we sinners sang
Yeah, all we sinners sang

These lyrics really touch my heart so much, they show me that even though I have moments, hours, days, weeks, months and years where I am just not looking in the right places that I am covered by the Blood of Jesus.  I gotta tell ya, on weeks like these when I feel like the devil is creeping in and daily life is just stealing my joy this gives me a reason to carry on and look to a brighter day.

As for Lent, I was to share a story with you from a week ago that really touched me. I was in Shaw's getting in line to check out. I looked behind me and saw an older lady, in her 70s if I had to guess. I offered to have her go in front of me. Normally, if someone has a small amount of things in their basket I would offer this anyway, but with doing the 40acts I have been more aware of my surroundings and looking for ways to be more generous.

This woman was taken aback when I offered and I swear she was almost to tears for this really tiny act of kindness.  She looked at me like I had 3 heads, not just 2, and must have said Thank you 5 times between the time I offered and the time she left.  We spoke briefly about the fact that she has never had anyone offer that to her before. I mentioned that we live in a sad world where small acts of kindness aren't done as often as they should be. She nodded, completed her order, gave me a nice big smile you could see up in her eyes and said Thank you one last time.  I told her to have a nice day.

That night I had to come home and share that with my husband and he suggested I write about it.

What can you do this week that is something simple and nice to someone around you?

Once a month I try to remember to buy the person behind me in the Dunkin Donuts drive thru their coffee. I never see their faces and I've never had anyone do this for me before, but I would be ecstatic if someone bought me my morning coffee.  Sometimes the smallest things we do can ripple into someone's day and change their whole attitude. I remember before EZPass when people would pay for me to go through the tolls as an act of kindness, it was a really cool feeling.

So, have I seen growth?  I've been going through my TV and movie viewing choices and trying to weed out all the stuff that gives me negative emotions, but also because it is a big time sucker.  I am hoping by removing that temptation to veg out in front of the TV I can make more room for God in my life.  I've been reading more, still trying to finish The Anxious Christian by Rhett Smith so I can write my review.  It has some really great stuff in it.  I think it's helping me see a little more of myself than I would like.

So, growth?  Maybe a little, a smidgen.

Check out Mark 4: Parables of the Sower, The Growing Seed & The Mustard Seed