3. I am my own human sacrifice
“What is something you have experienced that at the time seemed miserable, but in retrospect, you are so happy you went through?”
A friend and I are embarking on a long fast. A real fast—no food, just water, coffee, and tea for 60 hours. We started on the evening of Thursday, March 3, and will end on the morning of Sunday, March 6.
No, I don’t have an eating disorder. Yes, you could do it too if you wanted to. No, I am not going to die.
I didn’t plan to do this fast as part of Lent, I actually planned to do it over the weekend of the Spring equinox, March 20, in honor of the tradition of Ostara derived from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre (which, I am sure, has no absolutely no connection whatsoever to Easter except for that they are around the same time of year, have similar-sounding names, celebrate rebirth, and share rabbits and eggs as symbols).
But March 20 is my daughter’s birthday, and I already sacrificed enough of my body for her. I earned that birthday cake just as much as she did.
So I am fasting now. It made sense to work the fast into my Lenten practice and to fast on a Friday, though it also deprives me of one of my other Lenten practices: the annual McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish.
One cheat: for about 24 of those 60 hours I will be asleep. I find it remarkably easy to not eat when I am sleeping.
For the other 36, I will be hungry.
What I find nourishing and satisfying in these long fasts is not the self-denial of going without but the self-indulgence of having more time to do what I want.
Americans spend just under 3 hours each day engaged in finding, preparing, and consuming meals and snacks. Acquisition of food drives our schedules: Yes, let’s discuss your proposal over lunch or No, I can’t because I am eating soup.
That’s 6 hours for me to feed something other than my body (or my emotions).
For 2 days—Friday and Saturday—I get to keep my own schedule. To be fair, I am not the most pleasant person in the world while I am fasting—I get both manic with energy and edgy in my reactions. My family is fine with letting me do my thing.
And long fasts often give me powerfully stinky breath as my body consumes itself through a process called autophagy in which old cells are recycled by the body to be replaced by new cells that will bring healing and cellular-level rebirth.
Fasting is a process of consuming oneself in order to make oneself new again.
Fasting has its discomforts. And there are times during it that I wonder why I am fasting. But, like any birth process, the person who arrives after that pain and self-sacrifice makes me forget the pain and look forward to doing it all again.
And to Sunday.
