Fasting

In 2022, I gave up coffee for lent. I had given up caffeine a few years before, allowing myself to drink decaf in the morning, but this year I went all in. I allowed myself to have a pour-over on my sabbath, but other than that it was herbal tea, smoothies, or a cup of water in the morning. I hated it. Sometime during the first week, I actually cried because I couldn’t have my coffee. Oftentimes before I go to bed I will actively get excited that, upon waking, I will put on my slippers, pad to the kitchen, and make myself a cup of glorious joy — and for forty days, I gave up that joy. It was horrible. I didn’t bear my silly burden well. While I got used to living without coffee, I never enjoyed my mornings in the same way over those forty days, and I was ready to pick up my habit again once Easter came along and spring was in full bloom. 

It was during this time, though, that I began to feel God shift me toward something new. I had been serving in ministry, first student ministry, then pastoral ministry, for six years, and I knew that there was something deeper happening, a specific kind of ministry I was being called toward. I had been overseas and seen the refugee experience, had led an immersive local trip for middle schoolers to have that same experience, taken on our ESL program at my church’s campus, and become friends with internationals in my city. I began to realize that I was spending far more of my time in “international” outreach than doing my actual job. I loved my church, and had grown to love my ministry, but I began to feel that it was okay to pursue this dormant dream, and God confirmed this in my coffee-less time. Over the course of 40 days, I had two dreams: one depicting a baby, and God saying that that baby wasn’t mine, the other of my being pregnant, and giving birth to a little girl. As I sat with the child in the dream, I remember a nurse saying to me “there is nothing you can do that can mess this up.”

Over the course of lent that year, I began to realize that these dreams were about my ministry. The first baby was my current ministry, and God reminding me that this wasn’t mine to do forever. The second was my forever ministry, a feeling that God was giving me my wildest dreams, and that I was now free to pursue those dreams. The little girl in the second dream felt aligned with everything I had wanted to do with my life but had needed to set aside for a while. I assumed that suburban pastoral ministry was what I was supposed to do forever, but these dreams in March of 2022 woke something up inside of me that said otherwise. I began to feel alive again. While I had discovered flourishing in a place of constraint, this felt like God opening a door into my fairytale world, reminding me that dreams were possible, that what I wanted wasn’t crazy. 

I am sure I would have figured this out whether I had fasted or not. Somehow, God would have led me through the right doors at the right time. But fasting made the season poignant, and the dreams (both at night and for my future) felt more visceral in a season of felt lack. Giving up coffee isn’t a big deal, but my caffeine-addicted body didn’t know this. Addiction is addiction, and my body’s process of recalibrating opened up my heart and mind to need God in a different way. Fasting sharpened me, and sharpened my ears to hear what God was saying. This was in many ways one of the most beautiful years of my life, as God walked me into what I had been asking him for for years. Fasting gave me the ability to feel it all more deeply. 

I had met a pastor a few years before this time of fasting who was ministering to migrants on the streets of Paris, and he encouraged me to come and stay with them that fall and see what they were doing. I put in my notice at my job before I even had a place to stay in France, knowing that this was what I needed to pursue. It was a time of intense excitement as I wrapped up five years of studying for my M.Div, celebrated my graduation with friends, and then quit the job I had been getting the degree to supplement. I still wonder if the courage to make such a drastic change in my life was born from those 40 days of giving up my main morning comfort. Either way, fasting was the bedrock of a decision that would change my life forever.