I love wine.

I mean, I LOVE wine.

I love it with food, with friends, with Fridays, with fourth grade homework. Math with my son is stressful and sometimes mama needs a little wine to smooth out the edges. I’m allergic to math, remember? 😉

I also love wine on vacations and special occasions. The problem is, to me, every day of being alive is a special occasion - praise Jesus! - and what’s worthier of a glass - or two - of chardonnay than that?

On and off, I slip into a habit of drinking every day.

I know a lot of my mom friends who do too. No judgement there, mama. Wine (or your mom juice of choice) is the Calgon that takes us away. Remember those commercials from the 80’s? Take a nice long hot bath with Calgon and all of your stresses will disappear. Who the heck has time for that every night? I’m lucky if I have enough hot water to take a quick shower by the time all my people have done their evening drill. Guess what makes that crazy evening drill go smoother too? Yes, love, vino.

The thing is, I don’t want to drink every night. I mean, actually I do. LOL. Just a few glasses to wind-down my day. But I’ve found this interferes with my health goals: my sugar intake, my fasts, my sleep.. and that the effects often bleed into the next day with poor food choices or moodiness from lack of sleep. On top of this - my kids are watching.  I don’t want them to associate drinking with being a daily habit. I’m a little bit worried they already do. I didn’t grow up that way and I don’t want them too either. They are keen observers and if they see mom popping a cork on a Tuesday, this becomes “normal” in their brains.

So my first solution was to W.O.W.  - Wine on Weekends only.

And I can stick to that pretty well. But those weekend lines can get blurry. Thursday is almost the weekend and technically Sunday IS part of the weekend. So then I had to rein that boundary in a little more and stipulate that my “weekend” days had to be less than my “week” days - which, at a minimum is a 3:4 ratio. No more than three days a week of wine.

Can you see what is happening here? There’s a lot of thinking, negotiating, justifying…in general, just way too much brain energy around wine. It’s not how I want to spend my “mind calories” or my body calories for that matter.

Now, I often give up wine during the first two weeks of Feast 2 Fast. But once we can bring in the Heck Yeah carbs - I’m back on the vino train with all of this same mind energy happening. In the past I’ve considered giving it up for Lent but then thought the better of it. Not only did I not WANT to, I honestly was not sure I could go a whole six weeks without a glass of my favorite chard. I know how horrible that sounds.

So when this Lent rolled around, I felt that same nagging feeling. I really should give up wine for Lent, but I don’t want to.

I started wrestling with the idea about three weeks before Lent started - yes I’m going to do it, no way I’m not going to do it - over and over in my brain til I’d pretty much decided - nah, this isn’t the year. But then two things happened. I stumbled upon a podcast with a life coach who had this exact same struggle - specifically with chardonnay. She was speaking all the same things I am to you now. It’s not that she wanted to  - nor felt the need to - give up chard for forever, she just wanted to drink less. She even created a whole program around it called Stop Overdrinking. She was totally speaking my language.

The other, and way bigger thing that happened, was that I felt God speaking to me on this. One day when I was walking and thinking about this wine and Lent thing, I very clearly felt the word OBEDIENCE come into my brain. Believe me, that was not my word. I knew, I felt in my bones, that God was calling me to give up wine for Lent as an act of obedience to Him. Uuuugggghhhhhh. That is honestly what I felt. And truth be told (I’m totally embarrassed to admit this) I still considered not giving it up for Lent. I still wrestled with it in my brain for another week before deciding - how could I not do this thing God is asking me to do? It’s kind of scary I even thought otherwise. I knew I had to do it. This time was different. This wasn’t about anything else - the poor sleep, the sugar, my kids - but pure obedience to God. I’ve never felt this strong and clear of a call to be Obedient.

So here we are, friends. It’s Lent and no chard for this mama for the next six weeks. I’ve already made it through week one which doesn’t sound like much except that it was a week of spring break vacation in the mountains. And vacation pretty much equals fun food and drink in my mind.

But I’ve been strangely content and serene around the situation - much more than I thought I’d be. I haven’t been craving it or even having to “replace” it with kombucha in a wine glass or something to get that “feel.” (BTW - I gave up all alcohol for Lent…otherwise it’s too easy to replace it with something else).

I KNOW that this is God supplying the strength and peace I need. My mind is not obsessing over it and it just feels different than any other time. Which goes to show, when He calls us to do something, He will provide the means to accomplish it.

Another thing - I don’t have expectations of gaining anything from this situation. It’s tempting to be like: maybe God will “reward” me or maybe I’ll lose weight or some other selfish reasoning. Nope. This is about pure obedience. It’s a totally different headspace than I’ve ever been in.

I’m sharing this with you not to judge or try to persuade you into any course of action. It’s more that I hope you’ll be open, listening and recognizing when God calls you to obedience in some area of your life. And to show you that the hardest part of the whole thing is really in saying YES but that, once you do, He will supply the way through it.

If this resonates or you know another Mom who Chards too Hard - please comment, share on FB, let me know! I always love hearing from you.

xoxO,

Chelsea