A little Lent

There were three churches next to each other on a street, and all three had trouble with mice.  They talked about how to get rid of them and decided to share best practices after a few months. 

The preacher of the Baptist church said they had been successful at first using an exterminator but the mice came back.  The paster at the Methodist church told in detail the traps they used and how for a while, this controlled the population but they were again over run with mice.  Finally, the Catholic priest said, "Well, we actually have managed to keep the mice away and really only have a problem a few times a year.  We just baptized them all and now we only see them on Christmas and Easter."

Our priest used this during his sermon a few weeks ago and it got a lot of laughs.  But it rang true for us as a family until the last few months.  Church was something we knew we should go to, but just didn't, mainly because our kids acted like drunk monkeys every time we set foot in the building.  But now that Addi is going to church during school, she is pretty interested in mass, and that small fact makes church bearable for us all.

So, the point to all of this is for the first time, Addi got to really participate in making a Lent sacrifice.  She learned about it at school, how she should give up something that is a distraction, so she boldly chose candy.  In my mind, there was no way on earth that girl would make it one afternoon, let alone the 6 weeks of Lent.  I decided to take on an equally difficult challenge and give up Facebook for Lent.  I didn't want her to fail alone.

But, here we are, Easter Saturday, and I can tell you that as impressive as it might be that I stayed off Facebook (minus 2 quick glances to my private messages), it really doesn't even measure up to what Addi has done.  Seriously, she has not had candy the entire time.  Well, not on purpose anyway - she ate a chocolate chip one day and freaked because she realized what she did.  She even brought candy home from school that she was given 5 weeks ago, and it's still sitting in her room, waiting on Easter Sunday.

I've heard of Christmas miracles, but I think we've all just witnessed a modern day Easter miracle of our own.  Although I have a strong suspicion we will have to literally PEEL her off the ceiling tomorrow night after she digs into her Easter basket.

Happy Easter!