How Fasting for Lent Affected My Relationships

I have practiced Lent for roughly 12 years or so. (I started fasting during Lent after I learned about it in college.) I have fasted from a variety of things, and each year learned something new. I took time this year to read the book, A Hunger for God by John Piper prior to Lent. Though I will confess that the book caused me to struggle with wanting to fast for ascetic and legalistic reasons, it did remind me that the purpose of fasting is to drive me to Jesus, to make me appreciate the giver more than the gifts. This year, I chose to fast from bread, or more specifically from bread, flour, gluten, and all together things made with wheat. (Jesus says he is the "Bread of Life" in the Bible.) Though I had to decline some foods I wanted, I did not find the dietary part of the fast very hard. What I found difficult was how fasting affected my relationships.

My husband usually cooks breakfast and dinner for us on Saturdays. He makes amazing pancakes and we enjoy them thoroughly, when I am not fasting. I shared my idea of fasting from bread with my husband before I started, and he okayed it. I do not think either of us fully considered its implications, though. Fasting from flour eliminated Saturday breakfasts, which meant more hodge-podge eating and less intentionality. Our diets did not suffer, but the specialness and time we spent together took at least a small hit. My husband likes to cook with flour for dinners, too, and my fast cramped his style. He honored my fast, but also noted that it saddened him. While he did not fast from flour completely, he was subject to no flour in the things I cooked as well. He noted several times that he preferred flour and missed it. My fast affected my marriage relationship.

Fasting from flour kept me from sharing in relational activities outside my marriage, too. I did not eat the pasta my husband made for a family dinner occasion. I said, "No" to pizza and potlucks at work. I had to work around flour that presented itself when we got invited out. I could not share food with my husband as I am prone to do. (He may have seen this as a benefit, though!) The fast was possible, and through it drove me to Jesus, it also drove me slightly apart from the people Jesus has placed in my life.

How did my fast drive me to Jesus? Each time I found gluten in a product, it reminded me that Jesus should be part of everything in life, every fiber of my being, every moment of my day. When I found no good substitutes for flour in some recipes, I recalled that there is no substitute for Christ. I am saved by faith through grace and only on Christ's merits. When I craved flour-y things, it reminded me that I should want Jesus more than anything. It reminded me that Jesus sustains my life. And when I could not share meals with others, my fast reminded me that a relationship with Jesus is a joy I should want to share with others. That was perhaps the most poignant learning.

Lent is over for this year. I am eating flour and gluten and all things wheat again. (I thank God that I am able to do this since I have no allergies to them.) I probably won't fast from bread again, at least not for a while. God calls me to be faithful to him, and also faithful to that to which he calls me. He has called me to be a wife and a co-worker and a sister and a friend, and bread is part of what sustains those relationships. So now I eat and celebrate, and fellowship, even as eat and fellowship and seek eternal sustenance from God.