MARGARET BOYLAN
ASSISTANT EDITOR
A cold March wind blew through the tall grass. A hawk circled overhead. I breathed in a deep breath of actual fresh air, not Steubenville air, and opened my eyes. I was home.
I didn’t go on mission for spring break. I didn’t go on any crazy road trips to Florida or Tennessee. I simply went home. And standing by the old cornfields near my family’s farm, I had a chance to think about what it means to slow down and actually enjoy the simple things in life.
Very often, as college students, our lives become extremely hectic. Classes, sports, households, spiritual life, friends, homework, whatever. It can sometimes feel like we’re torn apart in several different directions.
We can get so caught up in the minuscule details in life, and we miss the big picture. We become so focused and busy with our own lives that we miss out on the people around us. It’s very easy to get sucked up in the busyness of life, to feel overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, fearful of not doing enough.
Sometimes we need to just take a moment to step back, slow down and look around at what God has given us. I think that is why Lent is such a cool opportunity in our faith lives to slow down, to give up those things that distract us from our real purposes and to refocus where our attention can be.
Lent is about getting back to where we belong: in an intense and unique relationship with God. It’s about getting rid of all distractions, which is why many of us strive to give up sweets, Facebook and TV for Lent. And it’s building back up that spiritual life and pushing ourselves to have a more structured lifestyles centered around God, as it should be.
This can be incredibly difficult and it takes a lot of time. We slowly have to detach ourselves from the things around us, and that can be very challenging. We become very comfortable with our busy schedules and our plethora of tasks and we don’t want to give them up. But when we do, we are able to recognize what matters the most. We can believe that the tasks we are doing are important, and they are, but they are not the most important aspects of our lives.
It’s the simple things in life that are the most important: God, faith, family, friends—those are the things that matter most.