Lent 2014

 

Happy Friday everyone! I hope your week has been wonderful. Not going to lie…this week was tough! Work all day and things to do every night. By the time yesterday rolled around I was physically spent! I started getting a few light contractions in the afternoon and decided to bow out of my last Zumba class. By the time Zumba would have started, I was already in bed! Good news is that I feel SO much better this morning and looking forward to the weekend ahead!

So, I am a little late in this Lent post. Some of you may have been wondering if I gave anything up this year. As you may recall, last year I gave up meat for lent. It was a tough challenge but one that I ended up really enjoying! I learnt to love a lot of different foods that I had never tried before! I also learnt that I really don’t need as much meat in my diet as I originally assumed!

This year I’m pregnant. And the thought of giving up a food item didn’t seem like a very good idea. Sometimes a craving can come into my mind and there is no stopping me until I get it! I didn’t want to torture myself for the last few weeks of this pregnancy. I racked my brain and finally come up with a plan.

I work on a farm where the majority of the employees are male. I have grown up on this farm and have loved every minute of it. A lot of the people who work here have seen me grow up. Being around so many men for such a long time has shaped who I am today. I am not afraid or intimidated in front of anyone, I normally don’t hold onto grudges and I have an awful POTTY MOUTH!

Yup. It’s true. This girl swears like a sailor! A curse word can come into my everyday dialogue without me even flinching in recognition of what I said. It’s a bad habit and one that I was fearful of for when I had my own children. I didn’t want to be the cause of my kids being the ones to teach their friends the “bad words”.

For Lent this year, I gave up cursing.

Now that I am over a week into Lent I have to be honest, it’s been a struggle. My brother has agreed to give up swearing for lent as well. To make us accountable for our actions, we now have a swear jar in the office. For every swear word we utter, we have to contribute $1 to the jar. So far, we have $11. 8 of those dollars has come from me.

The most challenging, yet rewarding thing is that I have to really think hard about what I am going to say. This helps me either find an alternative word or think about whether or not it even has to be spoken.

Don’t worry, at the beginning of Lent I announced that the one day that I will give in to swearing is on Labour and Delivery Day for Baby W!

Did you give anything up or make a different kind of promise for Lent this year?

Happy Friday!

xo