{"id":3409,"date":"2014-03-05T12:35:34","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T17:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.districtdiva.com\/?p=3409"},"modified":"2014-03-05T12:35:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T17:35:34","slug":"lent-is-here-what-are-you-giving-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/lent-is-here-what-are-you-giving-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent Is Here! What Are You Giving Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Excerpt from today’s EBONY.com column, “[THE SPIRITUAL LIFE] Lent and the Art of Letting Go<\/a><\/i>“<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s Ash Wednesday!<\/strong>\u00a0For many denominations of Christians and Catholics, today marks the beginning of the\u00a0Lenten season<\/a>, a 40-day period of self-sacrifice that honors Christ’s sacrifice of Himself on the cross for our sins, which ends in celebration on Resurrection Sunday.<\/p>\n

It only takes 21 days to break a bad habit, so Lent is the perfect season to reset your spiritual, physical and mental life, for good.\u00a0As a kid, I would use these 40 long days and nights to give up candy and soda, and then gorge myself on the goodies in the handmade Easter basket from my mom when Lent was over.\u00a0As an adult, (though I will continue to give up sugar) I think it\u2019s high time I gave up something a little bit more substantial.<\/p>\n

Recently, I heard a sermon by Pastor Howard-John Wesley of the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, called \u201cYou\u2019ve Got to Learn to Get Over It<\/a>,\u201d that made me check my whole life!\u00a0In this sermon, Pastor Wesley references the prophet Samuel, who is deeply depressed because the king that God had him anoint many years ago, King Saul, is no longer favored by God and is about to be replaced by David.\u00a0 At this point, Samuel has poured so much time, energy and resources into Saul to make Saul a good and holy king that it is devastating to Samuel that Saul did not work out.<\/p>\n

In a moment of\u00a0immaculate shade<\/a>, God says to Samuel<\/strong>, \u201cHow long will you mourn for Saul, seeing as I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go\u201d. You may need to read that again. God said: \u201cYou good, Samuel, or nah? Because I\u2019ve got something else for you to do.\u201d Shade, God. Shade!<\/p>\n

More important, God is telling us some perspective-giving truth in that verse. So often we get caught up in the hurt and disappointment relationships with others or lost opportunities can cause. These people and things seem so important, so vital to our existence and our validation, that when family and friends walk away from us or we miss out on opportunities unfairly, we start to mourn, like Samuel, not only the time, energy and resources we poured into those people or things, but we also mourn what could have or\u00a0should have<\/em>\u00a0been.<\/p>\n

Here are the 3 steps that God provides in order to let those things go and move forward.
\nRead more at EBONY\u00a0http:\/\/www.ebony.com\/wellness-empowerment\/the-spiritual-life-lent-and-the-art-of-letting-go-874#ixzz2v6vCtE6P<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
\nFollow us:\u00a0@EbonyMag on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0EbonyMag on Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Excerpt from today’s EBONY.com column, “[THE SPIRITUAL LIFE] Lent and the Art of Letting Go“: It’s Ash Wednesday!\u00a0For many denominations of Christians and Catholics, today marks the beginning of the\u00a0Lenten season, a 40-day period of self-sacrifice that honors Christ’s sacrifice of Himself on the cross for our sins, which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23,27],"tags":[90,292,543,544,545,547,648,806],"class_list":["post-3409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-diva-takeover","category-the-usual-dithering","tag-ash-wednesday","tag-easter","tag-lent","tag-lent-ideas","tag-lenten-season","tag-letting-go","tag-moving-on","tag-sacrifice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7nB6F-SZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}