Becoming Aware

This Lent, instead of giving something up, I decided to pay attention.

Not in the passive way—like vaguely noticing the world as it swirls by—but in the intentional, uncomfortable, deeply human way. Yes, I had to resign from my self-imposed hiatus of not following the news. Yes, I had to be more present, even when it hurt. And yes, I’ve felt a little more anxious. A little raw. A little undone.

But something beautiful has happened too.

I find myself slowing down—stepping off the treadmill of distraction and into the stillness of sacred noticing. I’ve started to pause. To really see. A mother clutches a tiny mitten in the grocery store line. A headline breaks my heart. A siren in the distance becomes a prayer on my lips. I stop scrolling, and I whisper names.

God, be near.
God, have mercy.
God, I see.

It turns out that paying attention is its own kind of prayer. Not the folded-hands, eyes-closed kind (though those are good too), but the sort of prayer that walks around in your body. The kind that breathes in the pain of the world and breathes out something like hope.

Fasting, prayer, and giving—those age-old Lenten rhythms—have taken on new forms.
Fasting looks like putting down my phone when the doomscroll beckons, so I can sit with the real sorrow of the world.
Prayer has become presence: to the moment, to my emotions, to the ache in someone else’s story.
Giving feels like empathy, like energy, like looking someone in the eye and saying, “I’m here.”

By paying attention, I’ve become more aware of my own thoughts, my feelings, my surroundings—and strangely, that’s made me less self-absorbed. Life feels less like a mirror and more like a window. The world has opened up.

I see the beauty now. In small things. In hard things. In the shape of the trees against a late winter sky. In the way grief makes room for compassion. In the way love shows up in casseroles and cardboard signs and brave first steps.

I’ve started caring more. About the people I’ll never meet. About the systems that shape us. About the planet we’re called to tend. About the neighborhood that wakes and sleeps around me.

Paying attention has made me want to make positive changes—not because I’m the hero of this story, but because when I really look, I remember that God is already here. Already moving. Already present in every moment I thought was mundane.

And isn’t that the call of Lent? To wake up. To return. To remember we are dust—but dust that is deeply, divinely loved.

So this Lent, I didn’t give up chocolate.
I gave up indifference.
I gave up numbness.
I gave up the luxury of not noticing.

And in its place, I found beauty. I found God.
I found the world, aching and alive, waiting to be seen.