Judith Watson, ENDOW facilitator, Indiana

For me, Lent is a time to bring more silence into my life, in order to hear the Holy Spirit speak to me. I am a news-aholic and I tend to have a TV on all of the time so that I can keep abreast of all of those "news alerts." During Lent, I strive to keep the house quiet, do more spiritual reading, and spend time pondering where I have been spiritually and where I need to go. And I clean! Thanks to my daughter Jill, I discovered an excellent way to detach from things, in a 40 Bags for 40 Days exercise of cleaning closets and drawers, getting rid and giving away those items that can be of use to someone else, or that just need to be tossed out. Manual labor is a good time for pondering what is important in life. At the end of Lent, I hope to have a clean house, both physically and spiritually! I also hope that at the end of Lent I have developed a good spiritual habit that I will keep with me even when Lent is over. My Lenten exercise becomes an Easter gift for my soul.