How is fasting going?

Today is the fourth day this Lent (and ever) that I have tried fasting. At this halfway mark, I thought I might reflect briefly on the experience.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the reason I have decided to fast once a week this year is that my churches and I are doing a hunger series for Lent, so as a part of my education about this important issue, I am letting myself feel what it's like to be hungry. Of course it does not even come close to what it's really like to be hungry, and I'm learning that more and more as Lent goes on. Here are some reasons:

1) The biggest one is, it's a choice. On any given Wednesday, I could wake up and say, "Nah, not today. I'm not feeling well," or, "I need my energy today, and it's in my best interest not to fast today after all." What a luxury to have that option.

2) It's only one day, and I know at the end of the day I will be treated to a wonderful soup supper. I won't even have to make my own meal! It will be laid out before me, in all of its abundance, for me to eat my fill. So all day long, I can watch the clock and say, "I just have to make it 3 more hours. You can do it, Johanna. Three more hours..." But people who are really hungry don't always know where the next meal is coming from. There's no countdown, no goal. And the meal they do get probably won't be as abundant as mine. I find that Thursdays I'm much hungrier than usual, making up for not eating on Wednesdays. This, too, is not an option for those in the situation I'm trying to simulate.

3) I have food. This is actually to my disadvantage. I just went to the grocery store, so my fridge is loaded. I have a couple of beautiful grapefruits in there, a bunch of kale that is dying to be turned into kale chips, a huge pot of chili that is going to feed some friends tomorrow, a bag of apples, some cheese, a bag of guacamole... okay, I need to stop. All of that is in my fridge, taunting me. My landlady downstairs was making something this morning that smelled delicious and the scent is wafting into my apartment. Torturous. Would it be easier if my fridge were empty? Tough to say. In this case, it is not so much the hunger that taunts me as the temptation. So, it is no burden for my hunger - in fact it helps because again, I have the assurance that at the end of the day (literally), I have as much food as I can eat, and the possibility of going to buy more. But, it does present another challenge: the spiritual challenge of temptation instead of the bodily one of hunger. Although, I'm sure temptation is a challenge either way. In my case it is stealing from myself, but I suppose if I were hungry enough, desperate enough, it could be stealing from elsewhere.

On that note, someone from my church shared a very moving story. A__ did our presentation last week on local hunger, because she is on the board of one of our local food pantries. This story is what drove her to get involved. She and her husband have a small farm, including an apple orchard. They befriended a couple young neighbors, boys about 9 and 11. The boys would join them as they walked their dogs, or say hello while they waited for the school bus... but A__ kept them at arm's length. Didn't want to get too involved in their lives. One day, Columbus Day, she looked out and saw the boys in her orchard, picking apples. Curious, and maybe a little upset, she went out to see what they were doing. The older boy turned to her, caught, and said, "There's no school today, and we haven't eaten anything since school on Friday. I'm getting some food for my brother." Wow. A__ and her husband were so moved by this, seeing the face of local hunger in the tearful eyes of a little boy, that they first of all sent the boys home with some food, checked up on them to make sure they had what they needed, and then found out what else they could do. In this case, the temptation to steal apples from the neighbor led to good things. Temptation doesn't always lead to such a happy result.

4) One other thing I've noticed. As soon as I wake up on Wednesdays and realize I can't eat until dinner, I am super conscious of how my stomach feels. I notice every reference to food and long for it. I crave anything and everything (Goldfish crackers would be delicious right now, for example). I even resented my dog this morning when I put his scoop of lamb and rich food in his little bowl (this is NOT one of the things I'm currently craving, FYI). I can see why the hypocrites in Matthew's Gospel scrunch up their faces while they fast - I scrunch up mine, too, because I'm pouting. Boo-hoo, it's so hard to be me, I want to eat all of this food I have and can't. I went to Uno's last night and got a delicious pizza and now I can't eat my leftovers until tomorrow. Waahhh, poor baby. But I can imagine, if I really didn't have any food, if I was really hungry, that food would be all I could think about, much more so than is the case now. No wonder children who are hungry often don't do well in school. They lack the energy from calories, they are distracted by thoughts of food, and probably many other reasons that I don't know about.

These are good thoughts to have. Even if I won't come out of this experience with a true idea of what it is like to be hungry, I am certainly thinking about it. And I'm praying about it. And I'm a lot more involved in feeding the hungry than I would be if I were just donating food or money because I'm involving more than my bank account in the experience.

Oh! One more thing, slightly different topic. One of the challenges we have put before congregation members is to see how much food they could buy for $5, and to bring that food to church to donate it. So I did it yesterday. First challenge was that I had to get non-perishable food, because it's going to a pantry. So that cut out options like day-old bread or bruised produce or other things that could be immediately consumed. Second problem was that I went to Wegmans, which is not known for its great prices on food. If I really wanted to get a lot, I should go to a discount grocery story (like Grocery Outlet in my home town, but I don't know the equivalent here). But I did what I could. I wanted to get healthy food, so not just a bunch of Ramen or processed food, and I wanted to get a full meal, and for it to be a balanced meal. So I saw some $1 spaghetti sauce with meat. Great! Two food groups. I found some pasta for 89¢. Some green beans for 49¢. Got a bag of brown rice for 99¢, a can of tomatoes for 89¢, and a can of black beans for 79¢. Figured that could make a sort of Spanish rice dish. I also got some tuna, but realized I'd gone over. But that's not too bad! I even had 6¢ to spare. :) (Disclaimer: I may have remembered prices incorrectly, so don't add it up. The total was $4.94.) But it was a lot of going back and forth looking for deals, and some dashed hopes when I thought I could get something for cheaper than it was. Again, I got a little bit of the feeling of what it's like not to be able to just get what I want. While I was looking for a can of hearty soup (much more expensive than I thought), I saw some butternut squash soup that I thought Michael and I would enjoy... and I bought it for myself and felt really guilty about it. It would have eaten up almost my whole $5 budget, which is nothing to me and my steady income, but would only fill maybe three bellies one time, and then only when supplemented with bread. No good. But the contrast was powerful, and for that, I'm grateful.