“I Am Giving Up Using”
In this season, many of us are asked a familiar question.
“What are you giving up for Lent?”
Chocolate.
Meat on Fridays.
Social media.
Complaining.
Sugar in coffee.
We smile. We negotiate. We joke about it.
But this year, when someone asks me, I want to say something a little different.
I’m giving up using.
And I don’t mean forks and spoons.
I mean using life.
Using people.
Using experiences.
Using substances.
Using comfort to avoid discomfort.
Using noise to avoid silence.
Using anything to avoid simply being present.
Ash Wednesday reminds us of something stark and holy:
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Dust.
Not productivity.
Not image.
Not performance.
Dust.
And here is where I want to be personal for a moment.
There have been seasons in my life when I was not living—I was using.
Using substances to heighten experience.
Using distraction to avoid grief.
Using intensity to escape quiet.
It did not begin as destruction. It began as enhancement. It felt like adding something to life.
But slowly—quietly—what I thought was enhancing life was actually narrowing it.
I was no longer receiving the world.
I was trying to manage it.
Control it.
Manufacture it.
And underneath all of it was fear.
Fear of stillness.
Fear of emptiness.
Fear that if I stopped “using,” there would be nothing there.
But what I have been discovering in recovery—slowly, imperfectly—is that when I stop using, something astonishing happens.
Life is still there.
The chair is still there.
The light through the window is still there.
The love of my mother.
The love of friends.
The quiet presence of God.
None of it needed to be intensified.
It only needed to be received.
That is why Ash Wednesday speaks to me so deeply.
Because dust doesn’t perform.
Dust doesn’t enhance itself.
Dust simply is.
And in Genesis, God forms us from dust and breathes into us.
Dust becomes alive not by striving, not by using—but by receiving breath.
The ashes on our foreheads are not decorations.
They are not shame.
They are truth.
We are fragile.
We are limited.
We are mortal.
And yet—we are loved.
When I say I am giving up using this Lent, I do not mean I have mastered anything.
I mean I am practicing trust.
Trust that I can sit in a room without trying to improve it.
Trust that I can feel sadness without escaping it.
Trust that I can experience joy without amplifying it.
Trust that God is present in the unenhanced moment.
This is not about willpower.
I have tried willpower. It works for about three days.
This is about unclenching.
Opening the hands.
Letting the world be what it is.
Letting people be who they are.
Letting God be God.
So when someone asks you, “What are you giving up?”
You may say chocolate. That’s fine.
But perhaps inwardly, quietly, you might say:
“I am giving up using.”
And in that giving up, perhaps we will discover that we were never meant to use life.
We were meant to live it.
Philip