Collateral Damage

So my quest to not eat any meals by myself has led to some wonderful things. I have had some pretty great meals with friends (made by me and made by them) and forgone a lot of very tempting and very empty calories. Also, earlier this week, I had dinner with my family in Austin via Skype. As a friend of mine told me, the picture I took of the event is super adorbs:

While things have been great in my Lenten discipline, there is one group of people I’ve thoroughly neglected because of it. I have lived at Union for almost 3 years now, and have become pretty good friends with the folks who run the deli across the street. Whenever I am in a hurry or too tired to make lunch or dinner, I hop across the street and grab a quick sandwich. They know me pretty well there; a lot of you probably have some neighborhood places that are the same way.

I walked into the deli yesterday, and the man who runs the register asked me where I’ve been lately. He asked me if I had already graduated, and told me that he missed me. That struck a chord.

We have reached the point in Lent where we are settling into our new routines. As we do that, we should think about the parts of life-before-Lent we are missing out on. Some of them are important, others are not. But thinking about the whole effect of our Lenten disciplines is part of making meaning in them.