Four days into Lent and the exercise is raising more questions than it's answering.  My inability to perform a 'perfect' lent leaves me with a sinking feeling of failure and comprimise and yet each of these choices was made for good reason.  Perhaps the oddest insight is that my Protestant upbringing, which makes so much of God's forgiveness, has left me with a persistent feeling of guilt.  The choices that I made, to have 2% milk in my coffee instead of cream (although a perfect lent would have refrained from even that amount of dairy fat), my slip up on Ash Wednesday w

18 hours into Lent and I'm wondering what it means to 'slip up'.  My intention is that abstinence from beef and pork fats will extend to dairy products that contain milk fat, and things cooked in pork fat or beef tallow.  As a Catholic this wouldn't be a problem because I could just seek an 'indulgence' and thus make up for any errors through good works.  The current protestant understanding of Lent doesn't seem to have any such 'forgiveness' built in to it.  So one either has to just live with the guilt of having failed, or has to learn to forgi