Adding Back to Lent.

I think that my friend Katherine put it well in her blog post, just how I'm feeling this year.

Life with littles is sacrifice. I no longer sleep, I don't eat full meals, I rarely get a morning shower, my body is not my own, date nights aren't an option, I haven't had a moment to myself in ages, there is no time for TV and Facebook, we live frugally, we endure harsh criticism for our life and I feel far from Christ and very near all at once.What is left to give up?

So this year I'm "adding in" where Lent is concerned. I can think of about 20 things I'd like to add to our already very busy life, but when? I have been searching high and low for things that we can do as individuals and as a family to enrich our faith and live more authentically as a young Catholic family. The things I've landed on this year are things we can do "as we live," so that the kids start to see their faith as a flowing part of their lives, rather than a Sunday morning event.

Here's what our Lent will look like.

• We will do one thing every day to make our home more visibly Catholic. We have the "usual stuff," but when I walk in the door I don't think to myself, "My, my. A Catholic family surely lives here!" So this year I'm going to work to create a more Catholic home in the visual sense. 
• We will give something to Goodwill daily. 
• We will park farther out in the parking lot when we go shopping in order to say prayers while we walk in and while we walk out. 
• We will create this family tradition. I hope that we can make it a year-long practice moving forward.

The idea behind our Lenten activities this year is to create practices that will carry us forward into the Year of Faith as a family. With young children time is at a premium and it's so hard to make the time to do everything we want to do. Adding these activities is a small way that we can teach the kids to live their faith daily.