If you read the standard literature, Lent is supposed to be a quiet season. It’s framed as a retreat—a time to slow down, empty ourselves, and sit in sombre reflection. After all, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, and we are invited to follow Him there.
For a neurotypical brain, a quiet wilderness might sound incredibly peaceful.
But for my ADHD brain, it feels like a bit of a trap.
The truth is, my experience of Lent—and particularly the march towards Holy Week—is rarely quiet. In fact, it is one of the loudest, most exhausting paradoxes in the church calendar. It is a season that manages to be painfully slow and overwhelmingly busy at the same time.
Here is what the Lenten struggle actually looks like from the inside of a neurodivergent mind.
The Prayer Meeting Struggle
The Church places a massive premium on silence during Lent. We are encouraged to sit still and “listen”. But for an ADHD brain, silence is rarely actually silent. When you remove external stimulation, my internal noise turns up to a deafening volume.
Picture a typical Lent prayer group. The leader gently suggests, “Let’s just have ten minutes of quiet reflection.” Immediately, heads bow and eyes close. I usually last about twelve seconds before I start fidgeting. I try to pray, but then I crack an eye open and look around the room. Everyone else looks so perfectly still and holy.
And then the guilt sets in. I sit there wondering: Am I getting the same thing out of this that they are? Are they actually experiencing God right now, or are they also just remembering they forgot to reply to an email? The sheer effort it takes to simply appear still and contemplative leaves me more drained than if I’d been talking the whole time.
The Busyness Paradox
Then there is the diary. We are told Lent is a time to strip things back, but the reality on the ground is that it’s peak admin season.
While the theology is slow, the schedule is frantic. Suddenly, I’m helping organise extra Lent events, trying to pull together a Bible study, and fielding emails about the church deep clean in time for Easter.
Add that to the standard admin of everyday life, work, and the relentless, form-heavy paperwork of the discernment process, and the cognitive dissonance is huge.
My brain is desperately trying to task-switch between the profound, heavy reflection of the season and making sure there’s enough polish for the brass cleaning rota. It is a logistical marathon.
The Holy Week Whiplash
And then, we hit Holy Week. For the ADHD candidate or minister, Holy Week is an absolute gauntlet.
It is physically demanding, but more than that, it is emotionally dysregulating. ADHD often comes with heightened emotional intensity—we feel things at 110%.
Holy Week demands that we deeply engage with the intimate betrayal of Maundy Thursday, the crushing grief of Good Friday, the hollow waiting of Holy Saturday, and the explosive joy of Easter Sunday, all within a few days. It is emotional whiplash.
By the time I get to the Easter Vigil, I am often not feeling a profound sense of resurrected joy; I am just profoundly overstimulated.
Reframing the Wilderness
I am learning to stop apologising for this.
If you are navigating Lent with ADHD, or any form of neurodiversity, you need to know that your struggle to “sit quietly” is not a spiritual failure. God does not require us to neurotypically meditate our way to the cross.
Your wilderness doesn’t have to look like their wilderness. Jesus didn’t just sit perfectly still for 40 days; He was actively wrestling. Perhaps our Lenten discipline is simply learning to give ourselves grace when we fidget through a prayer meeting, when we drop the ball on a piece of admin, or when our brains just feel too loud for the “quiet season.”
Jesus walked right into the messy, noisy chaos of Jerusalem. I have to believe He is perfectly capable of meeting us in the chaos of our own minds.
💬 Over to you in the comments: Does the “busyness” of the quiet season catch you off guard, too? Do you also peek during silent prayer? Let others know in the comments.