The week Lent began, I traveled to Florida for a family emergency. Right after I returned home, I left for Scotland with my daughter and my husband.
She was accepted to the University of St. Andrews, and we set off on the most extensive (and expensive) college tour in my eight-kid history of college tours. After that, she flew home, and my husband and I stayed on for a long-planned trip to Ireland. I have been lugging my incredibly heavy roller bag for weeks now, and I have some thoughts about traveling light — in Europe and through life.
As I contemplate leaving my blow dryer (which overheats despite the adapter) and wonder why I brought pajamas when I prefer to sleep in my sweats, I’m thinking about these last days of Lent. What am I still lugging through life? What did I think I couldn’t live without but should reevaluate because it’s actually burdening me? This year, Lent isn’t about what I’ve given up, but what I’m still carrying.
Forty days of penance and prayer loosen the grip we keep on things — habits, comforts, expectations. Throw in a couple of serious crises and travel abroad? It’s clear that Lent is about letting go this year. That’s rarely neat for any of us. The things we cling to are woven into our days, wrapped up in our roles as parents, spouses and children of God.
Like all journeys, the Lenten journey is one of discernment. What do I truly need for the road ahead? What has been weighing me down and making the trip cumbersome? Sometimes, the burden isn’t chocolate or social media; it’s heavier. It’s resentment, control, or — my personal favorite — anxiety dressed up as planning. These aren’t things we leave behind with a single resolution. They take time, grace, and often the nudge of a season like Lent.
Holy Week invites us to pause and examine what we’ve packed in our hearts. Jesus enters Jerusalem not on a war horse, but on a donkey — lowly, unencumbered. He walks toward the cross stripped of everything: reputation, security, even the presence of friends. There’s no armor to defend him, only love to sustain him. His is the ultimate act of traveling light.
In family life, we often feel the pressure to carry it all. We hold calendars, car keys, school plans, and emotional weather systems. We want to be everything for everyone, and we sometimes mistake that desire for virtue. But Lent teaches us a different kind of holiness — the kind that comes from surrender, from trusting that our smallness is not a failure but a doorway to grace.
Maybe this Lent wasn’t perfect. Maybe the sacrifices were inconsistent, the prayers interrupted by children or the mess of daily life. But if we’ve learned to loosen our grip, even a little, then we’ve moved closer to Easter. If we’ve found — amid the fasts and failures — a quiet space in the soul where we’ve left room for Christ, then we are on holy ground.
As we approach the joy of Easter morning, perhaps the invitation is not to pick everything back up again, but to keep traveling light. Maybe even to travel lighter still? To hold space in our homes for silence and wonder and genuine rest in Our Lord. To walk with open, unencumbered hands into the season ahead, trusting that the God who called us into the desert will lead us to authentic abundance — not the kind measured by schedules or stuff, but by peace, presence and the freedom to love well.
What would it look like for our families to live an Easter life marked by simplicity? What would we gain if we chose not to carry what Christ has already redeemed? What if we journeyed the rest of the way, continuing to lay down burdens as we go?
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
