Driving to the Sunday-night mission at her parish, Sara had high hopes for the Lent that had just begun. It was her sophomore year in college, and she had celebrated Ash Wednesday at her university’s Newman Center just days before spring break. Now she was home for a week, and as her car wound along the familiar roads from her parents’ house to church, Sara mused about her three Lenten resolutions.

The first had been suggested by her straight-A roommate: no cutting classes! Sara was not looking forward to ending her love affair with the snooze button, but her grades would probably appreciate the effort. Plus she could tell people she was giving up laziness for Lent, which had the advantage of being funny. To do something positive for Lent, Sara planned to drive her homebound grandmother to Mass every Sunday morning. So now she had fasting (from skipping class) and almsgiving (with her time, which she had more of than money). All that was left for the perfect Lenten recipe was prayer, and Sara was very excited about her resolution in this category: the Newman Center students had selected a daily meditation book for the season and planned to share their reflections online each day. She couldn’t wait to log on, weigh in, and read what everyone else was thinking.

Black ice was nowhere in Sara’s Lenten plans. In fact, that afternoon’s sunshine had seemed to announce winter’s defeat, melting the last resistant patches of snow. But melting snow has to go somewhere, and as the temperature dropped, a thin layer of invisible ice had formed on less-traveled roads. One moment Sara was musing, and the next she was hanging upside down from her seatbelt after her car had skidded off the road and flipped over on an embankment.

Many things went right that night. Although her car was totaled, Sara did not break a single bone in the accident. An approaching motorist swerved to avoid her and then stopped to call 911, who quickly dispatched an ambulance. Sara’s mother met her at the scene of the accident and brought her home with no injuries, she thought, except a few airbag burns.

But the human body does not take kindly to being tossed around and caught upside down by a seatbelt. The next morning Sara woke up in agony, barely able to walk, and the long road to recovery began. To put it mildly, this was not the Lent she’d chosen! She had planned to give up cutting class and sleeping in on Sunday mornings; instead she gave up flexibility and comfort. She had planned to take up a charitable weekly outing and daily meditation; instead she took up thrice-weekly physical therapy and torturous daily stretching exercises. Sara was flat-out miserable.