Lent, gossip and me

I grew up Methodist, and my home church always placed a pretty significant emphasis on Lent. But for the last (almost) eight years, when my husband and I have been members of a Baptist church, we haven’t heard Lent mentioned nearly as much. It’s just one of those denominational differences.
Even still, I rarely enter the Lenten season without certainty in my heart about a something-or-other that God wants me to sacrifice, take on, or change. And this year? It was gossip.
Not gossip about people in my real, day-to-day life. Thankfully that’s not a huge struggle for me – because the Lord has been gracious to teach me a lesson or forty-nine about trustworthiness over the last ten or so years.
But celebrity gossip? Surfing the internet for the latest news on people I don’t even know? Sitting down at lunch and doing a quick scan of this magazine’s website or that magazine’s website to see if a marriage is on the rocks or someone has checked into rehab or a famous couple had an argument at dinner?
*Guilty.*
For a long time I’ve justified my celebrity gossip habit by telling myself that I don’t troll for information on some of the more vicious, more aggressive sites. I mean, if all I’m doing is looking at the websites of the magazines that I could pick up in the check-out line in the grocery store, then the information has to be pretty mainstream, right? It’s not like I’m digging for dirt all over the internet. I’ve told myself that it’s just a harmless, semi-mindless way to kill some time – really, it’s no big deal at all.
But over the last few months the Lord has really been convicting me about my “harmless” hobby. It was a series of things that happened (in the entertainment world and in my heart), and the bottom line is that I had a crystal-clear realization that, no matter how hard I tried to justify it as something else, I was reading about other people’s hardships to make myself feel better. Plain and simple.
That’s not good.
At the beginning of Lent I told my husband and a couple of close friends about my decision to stay away from celebrity gossip, mainly because I needed some accountability. And while there have been times when I’ve given up something during Lent and been surprised by how easy it was (last year I gave up Facebook, and it felt like a relief more than anything else), that has not been the case with the gossip. Honestly, I’ve been shocked by how difficult it’s been. I’ve been humbled by the realization that I spent more time than I thought catching up on the latest “news.” I’ve been embarrassed, honestly, by having to confront some serious ugliness in my heart.
But so far, so good. Last week I made it through two long plane rides without a copy of my most favorite magazine to read on a flight. I’ve stayed away from the gossip sites. And I feel more resolved than ever that I don’t want to be a person who finds some twisted degree of comfort through reading about other people’s troubles.
I’ll keep y’all posted on my progress.
What about you? Did you give up anything for Lent? Have you felt some fresh conviction as a result?