Two other simple symbols to remind kids (and us) about Lent

When my children look back on their childhood, I want them to see that we tried to order our time and our lives around the Gospel.* Celebrating the various Church seasons, and changing our habits and the appearance of our home even slightly for each one, will hopefully help to show them that.

So for this season of Lent, aside from our paper chain, I’ve also incorporated a couple of other simple symbols to help us all remember that this is a time for repentance and reflection about who we are and who God is:

1.  A Centerpiece:

Eating with candlelight is always pretty cool, but doing so with young kids, thereby living with the realization that any moment one of them could do something really dumb and burn the whole house down, well, that kind of risk-taking just adds to the magic all the more.  The only times during the year that we intentionally take on this living-on-the-edge behavior is during Advent and during Lent.

Centerpieces, obviously, can be quite simple.  In our house we now have what we pointedly call the “Sin Candles” on our table.  (See here for the backstory)  Really, anything that is not ordinarily on your table can be used to symbolically set apart this season.

The only real downside of this is that no less than 5 minutes into every meal the kids start begging to be the ones to blow the candles out.  Every meal.

2. A Wreath:

Deb has had the brilliant idea of creating wreaths for each of the seasons of the Church year.  Hers is gorgeous and artistic (and I'm sure she'll be sharing pictures of it soon!).  At first I was too intimidated to even attempt making something like that, but after a quick trip to the craft section of a store, I realized that a simple one wouldn’t be all that difficult. 

  I bought a roll of purple burlap (since purple is the official sponsor color of Lent), some brown burlap ribbon, and a wire wreath form, and came home to figure out how to intertwine them all.  With the help of my talented mother who happened to be visiting, we came up with this:

 Here’s how we did it:

Using pieces of the purple burlap roll, I wound around and around the wreath...

... until it looked like this:

It wasn't exactly neat, but I knew the brown bow would cover a multitude of sins.

Then it was just a simple matter of wrapping the brown ribbon:

.... again, even the safety pins would get covered later by the bow.  Gotta love bows!

And speaking of bows, that was the last step.  For this I highly recommend asking a talented mother, such as mine, to do it for you.  If you don't have one of those nearby, I'm sure there is Pinterest tutorial somewhere.

Finished product!

So, now, with very little effort or talent, we have a couple physical symbols to remind us that we are in a season set apart.  May our hearts hear whispers of God's grace and love throughout this time.

*They probably won’t actually remember much at all… .but that’s why I write it all down!