Happy Sunday!

Today, as I thought about how I've been looking forward to every Sunday since Ash Wednesday, boot camp Sundays came to my mind. I mentioned before that I gave up caffeine, a very difficult sacrifice for me to make (there's a lot more blood in my caffeinestream than before I gave it up...). I was accustomed to having at least one cup of coffee on weekends, and one cup of coffee and either an additional cup or a soda with caffeine later in the day, and the first couple of weeks I think my roommates were very tolerant of my crankiness. As a result of this difficult change, I look forward to Sundays as the day of rest, and therefore the breaking of the fast for the purpose of celebrating Christ's resurrection from the dead. By this I mean I enjoy a cup of coffee every Sunday--and this does not count as breaking my vow.

In fact, I anticipate Sundays now almost half as much as I did in boot camp, because even then they were a day of rest. All week we endured physical training, classes, shouting and punishment for tiny mistakes--even rationed bathroom breaks, which was difficult considering the copious amounts of water the exercise required us to drink every day. Sundays, however, groups of us were marched to church. The Protestant service was first, and the Catholic service was directly afterward. When all of the Protestants marched back to the squad bay, we joined in the field day (rigorous cleaning) that was, by then, halfway done, before going to noon chow (lunch). Sundays, we also got a chance to wash our hair and shower longer than we could the rest of the week. As you're reading this, it probably seems like a small luxury, but the common view of a recruit is centered around chow and Sundays. As long as we made it to Sunday, we could endure the rest of the week: it was our goal. We also got a chance to write a long letter home.

As Easter nears, I'm finding it a little easier to think of it as a goal than a fast. The boot camp comparison is becoming more and more obvious--as I got further along in my training and as I get closer to Easter, it's easier to see the end in sight and feel a sense of accomplishment as well as recognizing Christ's sacrifice for me (as I felt I was sacrificing in boot camp--my previous life was gone, and my Spartan existence was difficult and forced me to rely on frienships with other recruits).

I have one more topic: reconciliation. This was the focus of my mother's Sunday School lesson today, and God gave me a practical application I've been ignoring for over a year. He told me to contact my ex-boyfriend and ask his forgiveness for how I treated him. Despite the fact that this man hurt me deeply and I still carry emotional scars and feel relationally crippled, I realize now that it takes two to make or break a relationship, and it was NOT all his fault. I'm writing this here because I hope it will keep me accountable--the best intentions are worthless without followup. One of the "don'ts" my mom put on the white board was "avoidance," and I'm too familiar with that unsuccessful tactic. Another is "fault-finding," which I've been using since we broke up...you can guess how well that has worked. Another "don't" is "expect immediate change." So I'm going to try to do this without expecting him to reply, and accepting the possibility that he might respond negatively. Here goes.