This was the first day of my fast. I truly had good intentions when I began the fast but as you will find out, those intentions were thrown to the wayside after just a short time on the fast. This is my first journal entry about the fast and it explains how I felt about myself as a Christian which gives some insight to why I thought that I was a bad person. There are several reasons that I believed that I was a bad person. At this point in my journey the self-hate had not yet gotten so strong, it was there but I was still happy with myself up to a point. At the end of the journal there is some advice from a man called Bishop. This is the man that invited me to NYC and who later sent me to Nigeria as a missionary.
I had not found out yet about having the genetic disorder that contributed to my weight. While it is true that I didn’t eat healthily it is also true that my body just gains weight easy. It was not my fault that I didn’t know that, but I was and still am responsible to treat my body in a healthy way. I’m still a work in progress and the eating disorder is very difficult to work around to do that.
Another issue that I had was my health and how much pain I was in all the time. The pain that I suffered and still suffer is caused by the genetic disorders that I have but of course I thought that I felt that way because I of my weight. I think how different my attitude about life and myself would be if I had only known what was wrong with me and that being fat had nothing to do with being lazy which made me feel like a bad person. The heart pain I had is also from the EDS. I have two, not one, but two holes in my heart. Have you ever met anyone with two holes in their heart? Honestly this sounds like a cop out to me, but the truth is that the holes in my heart are due to the EDS and not my weight. I know that being overweight puts a strain on my body in all ways, but the holes were there when I was born, and it was not something that was checked in babies back when I was born. If I had only known the truth…..
July 15, 2002
On fasting. This is the first day of a fast that I believe that should last several months, maybe 4 or 5. I believe that I am hearing that I should fast having only water, and then later fruit in limited amounts. I am also fasting media only allowing myself praise and worship and teaching tapes, both audio and video. My motivation for the fast is to know God more deeply and to fall in love with Christ more deeply and to be more in tune with the Holy Spirit on a new and fresh level and to go to higher places in the spirit.
I am reading, once again, A Hunger for God by John Piper. This is a very practical book about fasting and why and how and anything else that one needs to know about fasting. One of the things that he addresses in this book is the fact that when we fast we will find things in our lives that we need to deal with. He calls it “the Hungry Handmaid of Faith” and gives her credit for reminding us that just as we begin to face ourselves and see dinner as a comfort to come so that we can distract our thoughts with food, she gently, as Piper puts it says, not tonight. He points out from another source Phillips Brooks who says, “The more we watch the lives of men, the more we see that one of the reasons why men are not occupied with great thoughts and interest is the way in which their lives are overfilled with little things.” {Phillips Brooks, “Fasting (a sermon for Lent) in: The Candle of the Lord and Other Sermons (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, 1881), p. 207} Piper says that “Anger, bitterness, jealousy, strife, fear-if they are within us they will surface during fasting. At first, we will rationalize that our anger is due to our hunger. And then, we know that we are angry because the spirit of anger is within us.
It is this point where I believe that fasting will do me the most good. I see that maybe God has allowed me to become what I am in order to test me to see if I love Him or me or the whatever it is that is keeping me this way. I am speaking of my weight and the abundance thereof. Maybe, just maybe this is why I am this size. I know that it is due to bad eating habits and lots of years of dieting as a child that I didn’t always have a choice in, and also due to the fact that I have become comfortable enough with who I am to not change that. This sounds sick, but I love who I am but, yet I hate every part of me except the part that loves God, which is very inadequate and so immature that I can hardly believe that I am even a functioning Christian.
Fasting, I am not sure about this whole fasting thing. It seems to me that fasting is such a hard job that I can’t seem to get started. I know the benefits of fasting, or at least of the benefits I have seen in others. I also know that if I don’t eat that I will lose weight, that is a natural law. I think that if it is a natural law, then why fight it, fast and lose, but then I think that if I am fasting to lose weight that I am not fasting to gain more of Christ. How can this be? Can I do both? And is it the losing of me that needs to happen because it is me that I am so comfortable with that is partly keeping me from having more of Christ.
I think about having a new body and I see the benefits there, a husband, nice clothes, respect from others, beauty, a place in the world. Is this really all my soul desires, or is this really what all I am afraid of? I don’t see that I can’t have any of these things as I am now, it is just that in order to do that I would have to be so outstandingly special that I am not sure that I would like me anymore and what is the point of being if you don’t like yourself?
Honestly, thinking about all of this is not only making me hungry, but sleepy. I have been through nutrition classes and I have learned all about eating the way that God has created us, and I know the signs of detoxing and I can already see this happening, and I know more than anything that my body is starving for nutrition. You see, I didn’t get this big by just overeating for the sake of overeating out of an addiction to food. I got this way by never giving my body the nutrition that it needs. I only filled my stomach but never the nutritional needs of my body so as a result I gained weight and held onto everything that my body took in. This was a very eye opening discover to me but what have I done about it? Let’s see, I found this out three years ago, ate fairly okay, really well according to the nutritional needs of my body for two years and a year has past now without doing that. Not a good record.
In starting this fast I already feel condemned. I know that there is no condemnation in Christ, but I still feel it. I am guessing that this would be the first of many things to deal with. I can’t seem to separate fasting with dieting, or starving. I just can’t seem to think of fasting without obsessing about losing weight. I often think of dieting without thinking of fasting. I think that if I have gotten all of the un-attention in my life that I haven’t had, then not eating and being thin as a result will get me the attention that I have always wanted. Now, as a matter of reduction, no pun intended, I rack this attention thing up to a spirit of rejection. Yes, I have dealt with it, but…… well, that is all I have to say because I still deal with it. I don’t see myself as valued in the way that seems right. I see myself valued up to the point that if anyone looks at me and then that flies out of the window because being heavy is associated with being undisciplined and lazy. Well, who wants to listen to a minister who is undisciplined, that would be clear that that minister’s walk with the Lord is not up to par. So, I go back to weight loss. Is it okay to fast and hope for weight loss? (Notice that prayer and Bible reading which should be a big part of fasting have not been mentioned yet, I can’t get to those thoughts because thoughts of weight loss gets in the way.)
I am actually mad at the fact that I need to fast. I am not mad that I need to fast to grow my relationship with Christ, I am mad that I have to fast in order to get to a point where the fast is just about that and not about me. I am getting confused and this is what happens each time I try to fast. The thoughts about losing weight are so strong that I forget about the reason that I am fasting, and why this is a problem is because I am too happy with myself to fight too lose weight although I have the strongest of desires to be thin. I think that I am happy with me now so why struggle with such a thing as dieting to make me happy when I am already happy? On a deeper level I see this in my spiritual life. I am happy knowing who I am in Christ so why struggle with such a thing as fasting when I am doing just fine where I am. Here is the key, how stupid of me to be satisfied with my infinitely small stinky pitiful spiritual life that I live and not want more of God. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? I do desire more of God, but I have no discipline and therefore I can neither diet, fast, or do anything that would benefit me.
A bit of encouragement for me is taken again from John Piper. He says that “True mortification of our carnal nature is not a simple matter of denial and discipline. It is an internal, spiritual matter of finding more contentment is Christ than in food. It can be said then that I don’t have to worry about weight loss and more prayer, but that these both will be a result of fasting.
Aside from the spiritual aspects of fasting and the weight loss I so badly desire, there is the health issue. I am very unhealthy. My body is starving for nutrition and I know that I must get this under control or else I will die. My heart is an issue, my chest hurts all the time, whether it is muscles or really my heart, it hurts. I don’t have periods in any regular manner. My feet hurt and my back and my neck and my head and oh, I hurt all over. Then there is the hepatitis A thing that has taken a toll on me and I know that I need to give my body time to heal from that. I see all of this and I think of course I should do a Barley Green fast, but then I think that it is my pride that gets in the way. I am too proud or maybe it is not pride, maybe it is shame, that I don’t want people to know that I am on a diet because then they will watch me and lord it over me and only prove me to be a failure, so I must fast for spiritual reasons although that is a good cop out, it is true that I need that too.
Bishop says that I can fast for all three or one or two or whatever it is that I want to fast for and God will still honor it. He also told me to not do it out of religion. I am being too religious about it, he said to just go for it.
I am very frustrated, and I see that weight is a stronghold for me and I must tear down that stronghold but once I do then there is the weight that still needs to go. I know that once I tear down that stronghold then I will feel better about the weight that needs to go and I believe that it will go quickly and I can move on with the more spiritual aspects of the fast.
How to deal with the stronghold:
Come to terms that this is who I am. There are parts of me that I have not dealt with.
Forget that the past has ever happened, go on with the future.
Inner works- preach to self to over come will power.
Realize that personality is not the same as the Spirit man.
Say, I have this weight but it is not me.
The Lie:
I believed that God made me fat and kept me that way to see if I would love Him even though I was fat. It felt hopeless to me being overweight and like I could never have any happiness, or a normal life because I was overweight, and how much of it I had had become my whole focus, so much so that I couldn’t even think about the spiritual part of my fast which was only one area in my life where I felt condemned. I felt condemned in this area because I felt to be overweight and not fix it was a sin. I believed that the weight that I carried was who I was. I believed that my weight controlled what type of person that I was. I was told by someone, and I believed it, that no one would listen to what I have to say about God and His gospel because I was too fat to be a good example to others.
The Truth:
My spirit is not the same as my body. My weight does not determine the type of person that I am. God can use anyone that He wants to spread His Gospel, and even more so someone who is willing to be used by Him. I was willing to share the Gospel because I am not ashamed of what God has done for me like the Bible says in
Romans 1:16 EVS
“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
Since I was and am willing to share the Gospel I am confident that when God said in Acts and Mark that we should share the Gospel that because He didn’t say that we must be skinny, or not as fat, or have any certain physical look to share the Gospel that I can go and share the Gospel. If you notice in these two verses the Bible doesn’t reference any appearance at all for the ability to share the Gospel.
Acts 1:8 ESV
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the end of the earth.”
Mark 16:15 ESV
“ And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
Because I am a Christian, a believer in Christ and His death and resurrection from the grave, I am free of condemnation. That means that my sin cannot condemn me to hell. My weight was caused from a medical issue and because
God is a loving and merciful God He does not judge me for something that I cannot help.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus
from the law of sin and death.”
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