Second week of fasting

For our second week of fasting during Lent Chad and I decided to give up watching TV.  I thought that TV would be the hardest, but most needed fast we would do.  We have Tivo so we did set up to record the shows that we watch regularly.  It ended up not being nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be.  I found that what I missed more was not a specific show, but the "relaxing" time of just zoning out watching TV.  It was especially hard because during this week of no TV was when the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system announced drastic cutbacks of 148 staff layoffs and 12 libraries closing.  On Wednesday March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, we found out from a friend that in the past St. Patrick's Day was used as a break from Lent, which is why it became known as a drinking holiday.  So, since that was the day I found out about the drastic cuts and was in fear of my job, we decided to take the St. Patrick's Day Lent break and watch TV - and it did help me not worry excessively about my job and the library system.

Our pastor Jim described in one of the "Fast Forward" Lent services we should think about fasting from something that was "numbing" and I definitely find TV to be numbing in a way.  I don't always watch it to be numbed or forget about life, but I think I was guilty of just turning it on to have background noise or out of habit.  Chad and I have decided to try to watch less TV overall after doing this fast.  We have also decided to not eat dinner in the living room while watching TV, which was another bad habit we had.  But, overall it was not as hard as I thought it would be and we are going to try to use this past week as motivation to try to watch less TV in the future.

Our third and final week of fasting for Lent will be to fast from using Facebook.  While that might not seem like a hard fast I have found that I spend a LOT of time on Facebook - time that could probably be better spent.  So, the TV is back and Facebook is out (for the week).