Adventures in Lent
Spring semester, sophomore year: my first apartment! My roommate, Melissa, and I scraped together a deposit and first month’s rent for a one-bedroom attic apartment just off campus. I was so excited to get our first utility bill—addressed to me and not my parents (I still have the page from the phonebook with my name and first telephone number)! We had taken one more step into adulthood.
Melissa and I had lived together before, and although we had opposite schedules, we had gotten along well. That spring semester, however, our schedules lined up better, so we spent plenty of time together in the apartment. I’d come home from class to find her sitting on the floor, books and papers fanned out all around her, country music blaring. She’d return from work to see me cleaning neurotically, punk music floating serenely from the speakers.
The war was on.
When you share a common space with someone, good manners and general courtesy dictate how you behave in that space; Melissa and I threw out decent treatment of each other’s personal audio boundaries. If I was home first, I made sure to claim my space by playing punk or hardcore music that I knew bothered her. Likewise, she continually threatened my sanity with country or contemporary Christian music.
Something needed to change. We sat down one night to talk about the problem, and we mutually agreed to “fast” from playing music in the apartment.
I love the season of Lent. I love that it builds to the most magnificent of all our church holidays: Easter. I love the chance to purposely forgo a daily comfort or curb a behavior pattern. Lent awakens in me the daily dependence on God that sometimes just isn’t there. My first Lenten fast from music held no spiritual significance for me: it was just an exercise in compromise, but every year I learn more how to constantly call on God in times of need or temptation.
And every spring I succumb to the deep-down urge to listen to my punk music . . . in my car . . . when Daniel isn’t around.