I need some sugar. And other Lenten struggles. And why charity isn’t just about giving.

I’ve had a bit of a rough Lent so far, and lately I’ve been craving sugar like mad.

Have you ever been doing just fine for a while, and then your Plate suddenly starts to pile up too quickly…and then you find yourself without your teeth brushed dressed in ugly cutoff sweatpants and one of your husband’s old t-shirts sobbing in the bathroom next to a three-year-old squirming unproductively on the potty for the twelfth time that morning and an 18-month-old throwing a temper tantrum on the floor because she can’t have the orange slice that she dropped into the plunger when you weren’t looking?

That’s sort of where I am sometimes right now.

I’m having some general Lenten struggles (surprise, surprise:), some family struggles, some spiritual struggles, and some wearying-business-of-taking-care-of-two-little-children-and-a-house-by-myself-most-of-the-time-while-in-my-third-trimester struggles. I know I need this rocky road right now. It’s here, so it must be the Lord’s will, so He must be using it for my good in some way.

I think that, for me, the relationship struggles I am having in my life right now are the hardest for me. I am finding that I have much more to learn about the virtue of charity. Not the almsgiving kind of charity, either. The charity that you practice in your relationships with people, especially people who are close to you. Leave it to St. Josemaria to have just the Ponder-in-My-Heart quote for me.

“Charity consists not so much in giving as in understanding.” -St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, 463