Better than Magic Mushrooms

Why I Love to Fast

We all have our quirks. Mine (okay, one of mine) is that I love fasting. I didn’t at first. Sometimes love happens slowly.

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Last week I heard a college student give a report on a book about the spiritual disciplines. He summarized, Journaling isn’t for everybody. Some people connect to God around a campfire with friends telling stories. For him, this was a revelation—perhaps spiritual growth might require customized paths. Maybe, depending on your wiring, some spiritual disciplines aren’t as helpful as others. His shoulders relaxed, and he smiled.

Ah, the lightness of grace.

I affirm this message of grace and wiring and individualized paths to flourishing. Who God made you to be will have a direct affect on how God makes you. Some spiritual disciplines will seem like magic keys unlocking every door, revelation waiting in each exercise. And some spiritual disciplines, a struggle to practice and a mystery to understand, will feel Sisyphean.

Lean in where the fruit grows.

Also though, keep watering the mystery soil. Some disciplines take time to take root.

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I first started fasting in my twenties. I read an article written by a friend and found myself challenged. The Israelites fasted. First century Christians fasted. Christians throughout history have fasted. Jesus said, “When you fast…” Suddenly fasting didn’t seem optional.

So, together with my young husband, I fasted. I don’t remember how long—either 36 or 48 hours, something longer than a day and less than three. We didn’t eat food, and we didn’t drink anything with calories. It was probably the hardest thing either of us had ever done on purpose. We laid on our couch like beached whales. I still remember the salty, cheesy, yeasty smell of the Barnes & Noble cafe on the day we broke the fast.

I didn’t know much about fasting when I started. Why am I fasting? What is fasting supposed to achieve? What do I do while I’m fasting? These were questions for which I had only elementary answers (Because God told me to. Who knows? Don’t eat.). Knowing more might have made the fast more fruitful (and perhaps less agonizing). But still, despite my ignorance, the fast was good for me, primarily as a way to discipline my flesh. Saying no to my hunger developed a sorely underdeveloped muscle.

For the next decade I would fast as a way to bring my flesh back under the rule of the Spirit.

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Oh wait, I did know one more thing about fasting! I knew you weren’t supposed to tell anyone about it.

Oops.

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I was thirty-something and astorm, my whole self—interior and exterior—flapping in the wind like a battered sail, when I decided to take a second look at fasting. I noticed fasting was usually an expression of longing, an accessory to desperate prayer:

• David fasts while he prays for God to spare his infant son’s life. When God refuses, David stops fasting: “Now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?”

• Israel’s king Jehoshaphat hears word of an invading army and, afraid, “he resolved to seek the Lord. Then he proclaimed a fast for all Judah, who gathered to seek the Lord.”

• Esther calls for all of Israel to fast as she prepares to face the king and advocate for her people: “Go and assemble all the Jews who can be found in Susa and fast for me. Don’t eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my female servants will also fast in the same way. After that, I will go to the king even if it is against the law. If I perish, I perish.”

• The people of Nineveh, upon hearing Jonah’s proclamation of their impending destruction, fast: “They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least.”

• And then Jesus says of his people, “The time will come when the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.” When Jesus is present, the people don’t fast. When he returns to the Father, they do, because fasting is about missing and wanting and needing.

I related to these people with their desperate prayers. I, too, needed God’s attention and action. In my longing for a world-made-right, I fasted. Hear me, God. See me, God. Hear us, God. See us, God. Come back. Make it good.

Sometimes when I fasted I felt heard and seen, answered, filled. Sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I just felt hungry. I learned this was also good—to feel my hunger, to be made aware of my longing, to refuse to satisfy my deepest cravings with a chai tea latte or chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven, warm and cozy and falsely convincing me I’ll be okay, a little treat to distract me from my existential hunger.

In my thirties, fasting was painful. Because life was painful. Fasting helped me feel the fullness of the pain in manageable one to three day chunks.

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I was eating dinner with my husband under a giant tree in Cape Town, South Africa when it hit me. We were talking about a documentary we’d watched on hallucinogens and considering the argument from some Christians that mushrooms might offer a path to self-abandonment, clarity, and revelation. In a moment of true aha! I clapped my hands together and said, delighted, “Christians don’t need mushrooms; we have something for this!” And then I launched into three of my favorite Bible stories: Elijah in the wilderness hearing the voice of God, Moses in the wilderness seeing the glory of God, and Jesus in the wilderness taking on the fullness of God to combat the power of Satan.

My husband caught on quickly, his smile widened, his eyebrow raised.

I continued…

All three of these moments were trippy (the unseen made seen), empowering (man made strong), ego-less (self made small) and revelatory (God’s identity made manifest). This is everything we’re trying to find with mushrooms, but it’s not mushrooms we need…

Elijah fasted for forty days. Moses fasted for forty days. Jesus fasted for forty days.

I slapped the table with eager palms, “I’m going to fast for forty days!”

I’d just turned forty one.

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I didn’t fast for forty days.* Not for lack of zeal, but rather because Easter was coming and the idea of fasting on Easter made no sense at all. So I fasted until Easter—ten days of no food and no caloric drinks.**

And it was marvelous.

There’s this assumption in our heads that fasting makes us weak (what with the not eating and all). And that’s not entirely wrong. Go for two days without eating, and you’ll definitely want a midday nap. After four days standing up too quickly can be disorienting. I don’t recommend a ten mile hike on day nine.*** It’s true—there’s a hollowing out that happens when we fast, an emptying, but being emptied isn’t the end product of our efforts.

Fasting is about being emptied in order to be filled.

When Moses and Elijah fasted for forty days, their bodies were weakened, but their capacity to see and receive was strengthened. They put something down in order to free their hands to pick something up. They shifted their attention away from something in order to focus it on Something else.

Jesus doesn’t fast in the wilderness to prove that even in a weakened state he can defeat the devil. Jesus fasts in order to gather strength for the coming attack. Fasting is a discipline, and like all disciplines, the point is to make you strong.

Whether you’re fasting from food, social media, or video games, fasting is about making space for God to fill.

That’s what I discovered in Cape Town—fasting as preparation for blessing. During that time of fasting, prayer seemed more electric, Scripture seemed more alive. I was more attuned to the prompting of the Spirit. I was a better wife and mother and friend. I felt the presence of God and the comfort of God and the peace of God and the joy of God.

Eight days in my husband said, “You’re radiant.”

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On the day I broke the fast, my family drove east to Storm’s River Restcamp. We stayed that night in a cabin beside the Indian Ocean. As is common in South Africa, the power went out (just as we’d put dinner on the stove). With dinner paused indefinitely, I walked onto the porch and stood under the stars looking out at the ocean, waves breaking against giant rocks, bioluminescence lighting them like liquid lanterns. I ran inside for my journal and pen and returned to write a Psalm in the dark by the light of the moon and stars and waves.

This is what fasting is—putting off dinner indefinitely to be fed by the glory of God.

In South Africa they call these kinds of rolling power outages “load shedding,” and surely that’s as good a name for fasting as anything else.

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I don’t have a list of fasting tips. Maybe I could rustle some up, but I’d rather not. I don’t think you learn to fast from simple how-to’s. I think you learn to fast by trying to fast. I think you learn as you live and as you long and as you listen to the voice of God, always urging you closer to Him. I think fasting is prismatic—turn it this way to see one thing, turn it that way to see another.

I will say, you don’t have to know everything about fasting to try it. I didn’t know much when I started, but what I knew was enough. I trusted that if God told me to do something that thing would be good for me. I’ve spent a lifetime learning how right I was.

-JL

*I still want to fast for forty days. No idea if I’ll be able to. No, of course, I won’t be able to, but if God invites me to do it, I trust He’ll take care of me. So I guess you could say I’m waiting for an invitation.

**I’m not surprised God found me with fasting during the season of Lent.

***I did actually hike a couple miles on day eight of my fast, and it wasn’t as hard as I expected it might be.

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A few pictures from that spot in South Africa where Storm’s River flowed into the Indian Ocean, because, how could I not?!

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Let’s Meet Up!

• Okay, readers and friends, let’s get together! Meet me in Memphis, TN on MARCH 1st (and bring all your people). I’ll be sharing from one of my all-time favorite passages of Scripture and walking beside you as together we attempt to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is. I might even get my daughter to lead us in worship. It’ll be a beautiful night!
  You also have the opportunity to attend Park Avenue Church of Christ’s ladies event on Saturday morning (lunch included)—I’ll be teaching from the book of Exodus on reigniting our passion for the living God.
  Reserve your spot on Friday or Friday/Saturday with a $20 gift toward my work here: https://paypal.me/JJGerhardt
  If you’ve already donated toward making this weekend happen, thank you!
  One more thing: Saturday is open to everyone, but reservations are required. Be sure to reply to this message if you plan to attend.

• As many of you know, I’m on staff at Holy Ghost Stories as Director of Experience, and I’m a partner at the nonprofit Hazefire Studios. If you’ve never heard Holy Ghost Stories, it’s a FABULOUS Old Testament storytelling podcast for adults. It’s beautiful and moody and thinky and passionate and one of the surest places to encounter the glory and goodness of Yahweh. You should listen. AND you should come see us on tour this spring! We’ll be in six cities and would love for you to come, bring friends, and experience the love of God. Shows include masterful live storytelling from Justin Gerhardt (my husband and probably my favorite living writer), performance from acclaimed cellist Kendall Ramseur (he’s played for Oprah, Maya Angelou, and America’s Got Talent), and worship with Eve Adeline (she’s my daughter, but if you’ve heard her, you know—there is no nepotism here; her voice is a wonder). Find more info, and get your tickets HERE! Shows run from April 22nd to April 27th, 7-9pm.