Lenten Challenge 2020

I had heard it for years. “Lay it down. Hand it over to Me. Give this up. It is a crutch and keeps you from Me - from an honest, deep, intimate relationship with Me. It will be worth it.” God has been pressing in on me for years to surrender food to Him. Food? You may ask. How to you surrender that? Don’t we need that to live? We do need food, but not in the way I was using it, or rather, abusing it. For as long as I can remember, food had become my drug of choice. It whispered, called out, and even sometimes yelled to me: “I can bring relief from stress. I can comfort you. I can help sabotage your goals because you will never be good enough so why try anyway. I can be your source of joy.” Food screamed lies to me but I believe them. I gave in. I surrendered to the temporary pleasures instead of what is lasting and true. 

However, as Lent approached this year, this project was also presented to us. In addition, a friend gifted me a book, 40 Day Sugar Fast: Where Physical Detox Meets Spiritual Transformation. My life was not at an easy place and as the weeks ahead would prove unbeknownst to me at the time, it would only get more stressful. But, I knew I had disobeyed God long enough. I knew my sin was getting heavier and heavier to carry around. I was unwilling to go another day serving an idol made of carbs that spewed lies at me. Ash Wednesday was the day. I started the 40 day devotion, committed to eliminating all sugar and flour, and fully expected God to meet me in the space of desperation that I feared yet also joyfully anticipated would come. 

The day my Lenten fast began, so did the heat pour down in a wave that almost seems hard to believe. My two year old son needed emergency surgery, my mom unexpectedly came to visit, my children were on spring break yet my husband had to still work, and then the most striking of them all is that my kids’ schools were closed for the rest of the school year to aid in prevention of the coronavirus. Overnight, I became a homeschool mom to five children, no ability to go to the gym, connect with friends in person, and no concrete knowledge of when this would all end. 

However, God was also pouring down His sweet mercies from Heaven and not only providing opportunities to obey but the power to resist temptation. It was only a few days into the fast, in the middle of the night when one child was sick, then two hours later, another had wet the bed. Then, a storm came through and our shutters were tapping incessantly against our window. It was now 2am and all I wanted to do was go downstairs and eat a huge bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. But instead of getting up, I prayed, and laid in my bed for an hour and by God’s help resisted the temptation I knew I was too weak to face if I got out of bed. Another time, my husband was working late, I had gotten all 5 kids to bed, and was finally alone after a long day and in front of the tv ready to relax. I wanted to eat as a reward and as a relaxer. Instead, I prayed, started my show without any food and was able to resist temptation to use food inappropriately. 

As the days progressed, God, in His kindness, began to reveal just what happens when I was not satisfying temporary discomfort or pain or disappointment with food. I had to actually deal with my feelings. I couldn’t hide them behind the temporary relief of food and then be mad at food and myself instead of my husband or children or mother or friend that actually offended me. I remember in OA a woman saying, “Do you want to find out why you binge eat? Then stop binge eating.” The feelings, emotions, desires all rise up and out of me because there isn’t pizza stuffing it down to remain seemingly peaceable and agreeable demonstrating that this issue of food may in fact, not be all about food. 

“This isn’t about food,” I remember my counselor saying nearly 13 years ago now. My disordered eating took a turn for the worse during my first years of marriage. I couldn’t believe her. Of course this was about food. I’m binge eating, I hate my body, and then I binge eat because I hate my body. But, she was right, partly. It is about food. Certain foods are addictive and as someone like me with addictions running rampant in my family, paying close attention to the real chemical and biological effects of certain foods is real and wise. That is why I chose to fast from sugar and flour. But, on a deeper level, when those foods are removed, the underlying sins, reactions and feelings come flying to the surface shining like a neon sign over my head. 

What I desired more than that cookies or pizza or my “all time” binge food - a Wawa pretzel in my car alone, was to be liked, to be loved, to be what people wanted me to be. I had become a slave to other’s desires and wants. The fear of man was ruling my heart. “Cursed is anyone who makes an idol—a thing detestable to the Lord, the work of skilled hands—and sets it up in secret.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” Deuteronomy 27:15. I didn’t want to upset my husband with my difference of opinion. I didn’t want my friend to know I parented differently. I didn’t want my mother to know how much she had hurt me over the years with her lies of where true beauty could be found (hint: it’s found in the pages of Cosmo by the happy, skinny women smiling on the beach drinking Diet Coke). 

But, what if I wasn’t that person? What if I wasn’t skinny and tan? What if I wasn’t okay with the way you spoke to me? What if I was hurt by you as my friend? What if I disagreed with my husband? What if I had to actually confront someone for how they made me feel instead of eating an enormous bowl of cereal to temporarily forget the sadness and yet never dealing with the actual hurt but slowly building my wall of protection for you to never do that again. 

I had been pursuing peace in all the wrong ways. Yes, God calls us to be peacemakers, but I wasn’t actually making peace. I was avoiding the war altogether. Here I was, actually having opinions with no escape to hide behind and felt so very ill-equipped for this war of navigating my emotions, conflict, and relationships. My first few days of this were not pretty. I lashed out at my husband, spoke harshly with my children, and fumbled with my words around my friends. But, with God’s help, I was able to find my footing with communicating hurts, being quick to forgive, and pursuing lastly peace which is on the other side of conflict or misunderstanding. 

This conflict was not only with other people but with myself as well. There were lies about my body and my relationship with food that I have believed for decades that I was ready to face. Without the dulling effects of flour and sugar, my mind felt sharp and ready to fight. War was not scary anymore and I wanted peace. Unfortunately, my mother’s own insecurities with her body and inappropriate uses of food were passed down to me. Her critical voice was still too loud in my head. Overindulging with food would prove my mother right - that I’ll always be this way, I’ll always have to worry about my weight, that I’m not good enough, and that I can never truly be happy unless the number on the scale goes down. I would believe her lie and then use food to punish myself for not fulfilling some unrealistic expectation from her or myself or the standards of the world. 

But, God’s value system is different. Galatians 5:1 reminds me that “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Because of Christ work on the cross, I am free from her lies, her expectations, and therefore also free from worldly expectations and even expectations from those that I love deeply with regards to my body. God created me “fearfully and wonderfully” with no mistakes. I was reminded in scripture that our bodies are to be used for God’s glory and are His for as long as we are on this earth. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day”(2 Corinthians 4:16).  

My eyes and heart shifted from reaching for the pantry in moments of concern and instead to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. He was re-writing my story. He reminded me that although this is the way things have been, they do not have to continue. Freedom is here and I can resist temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13). I can find joy and hope without pleasing others but instead in the steadfast obedience to Christ. Psalm 16:11 reminds me that “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”

My prayer going forward is to continue to surrender each day to Christ. I certainly do not know what the day will hold, but I can be confident for this - God is for me, has may a way for me to resist temptation, and is my true judge. What I resisted giving up for some many years grieves me now to know what I was actually giving up - a deep and abiding relationship with Christ in the small, stressful moments and in the big, scary ones as well. Through them all over the past weeks, God has proven His steadfastness and reminded me of mine. I can be faithful because of His faithfulness. I can glorify Him because of his glory. May my hope always be with eyes to eternity and my confidence be in Christ alone.