Have this mind...

My daughter, Meaghan, is incredible.

Small-statured and often silent, our 16-year-old has been teaching me daily since her father and I married last year that there are many kinds of strength.  In particular, her choice to move from vegetarianism to veganism last Spring has showcased her uncommon strengths in:

• Self-control (I mean, seriously... a life without cheese???)
• Independence
• Determination to break from convenient/pervasive nutritional frameworks in our community in order to live out her convictions
• Creativity in baking without milk or eggs (If you don't think this deserves its own line item of acknowledgement, you haven't watched a vegan make cookies)

I have admired Meaghan's strength and self-discipline mostly from afar, as her taciturn nature has made getting to know her a bit slow going. While far from perfectly consistent (or as creative as she is), I have spent the last year trying to show her love through my cooking. It has actually been surprisingly easy to adjust a portion of each meal to conform to vegan rules with just a bit more care and label reading while grocery shopping, since I happen to already be running an approximately 85% plant-based diet for our household anyway.

Still, cooking for her has proven an inadequate strategy for entering Meaghan's world...

"God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering..."

As I have been praying for Meaghan this year, and seeking ways to build relationship with her, Lent has been approaching. Growing up Southern Baptist, we didn't do Lent. To be honest, I never understood what the purpose could possibly be of depriving oneself of something enjoyable for 40 days, especially if it doesn't add a thing to my salvation. (I may have jokingly resolved to give up shame and/or self-control in previous years, but that's about as close as I got to observance.) Not to be deterred by my cavalier attitude, the Lord blessed me with a few friends in adult life who observe Lent each year, and the idea lodged itself somewhere deep in my subconscious. 

There was something beautifully austere and weighty in what these friends do. I couldn't quite see the form of the thing clearly, but gradually I started wanting to have it, too. So, for the last 3 years or so, I've intended to observe Lent. (Celebrate the baby steps, folks.) But somehow Ash Wednesday always snuck up on me, and a rushed, thoughtless, last-minute sacrifice (which would likely only be of whatever thing I'm craving in the moment I remember Lent looming) just didn't seem to be taking this thing seriously enough.

This year's Lent didn't sneak up on me, but that doesn't mean I managed to prepare adequately. My disclaimer: I'm learning as I go, and trying to let the Lord use this experience however He will. I intended to read up on Lent this winter and go in knowing what it's all about and how to do it "right"... the reality of not doing this reading was almost enough excuse to put it off until next year.

But then the Lord brought Meaghan to mind.

To be more accurate, the Lord brought Jesus and my own 16-year-old self to mind. He reminded me of how far off and unreachable I had chosen to make myself, and of the incredible distance he came to enter my world and wear my experience...

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Phil 2:5-8

He reminded me how the one who spoke everything into being and holds it all together laid aside his comfort, his glory, his rights to take on our fragile, fallible flesh and limitations in order to reach us. Revealing just a glimpse of his experience through this analogous microcosm of my household, Jesus at once made himself yet more precious and personally invited me into Lent.

Don't get me wrong. I've got no delusions of grandeur here. I'm not comparing myself and this small/temporary sacrifice to His history-changing one. I'm not making any moral judgments about consuming or abstaining from animal products. And I'm not expecting this to necessarily change anything in my relationship with my daughter (to be honest, I haven't even told her about this resolution). My hope for this season of sacrifice is just for more understanding:

• of my Savior's experience in leaving his comfort and donning our flesh to reach us, and
• of my daughter's experience in choosing to live by her convictions rather than convenience, as part of a subpopulation that receives small consideration (and, at times, large disdain) from our community

For the record, I really miss cheese.
We're now, actually, almost 2 weeks into Lent, which means I've been observing vegan rules for the last 12 days. It has gotten, if not easier, at least more familiar... more habitual. I'm daily learning more about myself, Jesus, and maybe even Meaghan. Looking forward to sharing the lessons in days to come...