reflections on my 21 day fast

Reflections On My 21 Day Fast

I have been off my fast now for almost a month. Yet it, as fasts will do, impacts me greatly.

Fourteen years ago, I went on a thirty day fast. It was just one month out of the past fourteen years. Yet, to this day, I see the impact it had on my life.

For one thing, I no longer taste my food while I am cooking. I cooked for a number of people the whole time I was fasting, but, of course, I couldn’t taste anything without breaking the fast. So I quit tasting stuff, and to this day, still have trouble remembering to do so.

The same with this one. I was on the fast this time for twenty-one days. I drank what I wanted, but didn’t drink much with sugar in it.

I lost over fifty pounds on the twenty-one day fast. Twenty of that has come back in just general living. But I had been on the Atkins diet for a couple of months before, so this probably sped up the weight loss.

But it came at a price. I was cold the entire time (it was February, which didn’t help me much warmth-wise), I had a runny nose, my back hurt, I had tremendous bowel distress along with  a weird kind of diarrhea and I had a lot of severe muscle cramps. It was not enjoyable.

But with the help of God I did it. I know he had to be there for it to have been done in the first place.

Yesterday I went to the doctor for a check-up. The nurse and then the doctor noticed right away that I was thirty pounds down from a couple of months ago. Both asked why. I told them about the fast. You could tell that the nurse was having trouble processing it. She finally asked, what do you eat on a fast? I replied, nothing. That is why it is called a fast.

The doctor was fascinated by it, that someone would voluntarily go without eating for three weeks.

They didn’t really understand why I had done it and I had trouble telling them in a way that they could understand.

But I learned some things. For the next several days, I am going to talk about what I learned on my fast. If I had learned nothing, it would have been worthless. I believe that it was not.

So here goes.

What I learned in a physical sense from my fast.

1. I learned again what hunger is. There were several times near the end when I was truly hungry. You can always tell the difference between real hunger and mouth hunger. Mouth hunger wants a pizza or grilled cheese sandwich. Real hunger will look at almost anything as desirable. Real hunger will eat anything. Several times at night, I felt a almost desperate need for food. It is not normal, after all, for a person to go without eating. Americans are so well fed that a person can go two weeks before the first real hunger pangs can set in. I feel for the children in bad circumstances that have to go to sleep with hunger pangs. Mine was different, of course, I chose mine. They did not.

2. I learned what it means to do without. In a fast you do without something that is so basic that you many times do not even think about it. You go into a well stocked pantry, which I have, and take nothing for yourself. You invite people over for supper and eat nothing. You are sitting and watching a movie and eat nothing. You do without. This tends to make you realize that most of the stuff you have is not really all that important. I always admired the guys who could live in a room with little or nothing. I think I could. I would not put Ella through that, but I could do it. The stuff I own is not that important.

3. I lost a lot of muscle tissue. I was afraid I would, but I couldn’t exercise for the muscle cramping. So that meant I lost a lot of muscle. I did this back in 1997 too and took a while to get it back. The same seems to be so this time too. Since I always liked being a big strong man, this kind of hits me below the belt.

4. I learned loneliness. There is a camaraderie that comes from eating with others. That is totally missing in a fast. On the last fast, as well as this one, I stood in a grocery store buying food for my wife and for some guests that were coming for a prayer night. As I stood there in the midst of American plenty, something that almost looks like a warehouse for gluttony, I knew I was the only person in that place who had not eaten for several weeks.  You are alone in what you are doing.

5. I learned that people’s perceptions of you are changed. Others see you as weird. The guy isn’t eating. How can you not eat at all? Something isn’t normal with this. We are worried about you and don’t want you to get sick. What is the first thing you are going to eat? After a couple of weeks, people get a little scared of you. You are accomplishing something that they could never even think about doing. And they are afraid of what you are doing and by extension, you. It sets you apart.

I will have more later as I process this. I came off the diet to my father’s death and the funeral. We drove nine hours there and nine back. I came off my fast to a counter full of cake and stuff that people had brought to us out of love. It was a hard way to come off a fast. You really need to do so easily, but I was not able to.

But all in all, it was a good fast. And I intend to do a similar fast sometime soon.

wrap-up of my twenty-one day fast, part two

Wrap-up of my twenty-one day fast, part two

My father, John Thomas Cliver, Sr., died today at 1:25PM. I don’t what else to say right now.

Father God, I ask for strength for my mother. Bless her and bless my father’s children and his legacy. I praise you anyway. Amen.

wrap-up of my twenty-one day fast

Wrap-up of my twenty-one day fast

I had my first thing to eat today. It was oatmeal that Ella added dates, walnuts and Grape-Nuts to. It was delicious but, as I figured, it was not the ultimate of creation. Not sure why.

I do know that those things so greatly anticipated are never quite what you thought they would be. That is case with a lot of things in this life. And oatmeal is not among the pantheon of great and wonderful things. It is good and I like it, but still. It is just oatmeal.

The fast ends with a lot of physical problems and an astonishing weight loss of 55-60 pounds, depending on how accurate my scale is. That is just in three weeks. I never anticipated that, and my body has let me know that it did not like it.

Now comes the rebuilding process and an addition 30 pounds that I want to lose. I guess that in just three weeks, I fulfilled one of my New Year’s Resolutions, the one that said I would lose 50 pounds. Good deal, I guess. That is not why I went on the fast, but given to me by God in the fasting.

I am still processing what I have learned from the fast and will blog it later.

For now, it all ends on a sad note. My father, who is 82 and has Alzheimer’s along with two forms of cancer and a stroke, is about to die. We are waiting for the message and will go to Tyler, TX, when it happens. 750 miles there, 1300 round trip.

It hurts to hear this. He has always been a strong vital man and my mother is in pain at losing her lover. On top of it all, yesterday was their anniversary, and I doubt sincerely that he was even aware of it.

I still do not know why the Lord has put me so far away from my family. The immediate aphorism that comes to hand for most people is that he had some good reason and a job for me here. That trips so liltingly off the tongue but is just that: an aphorism. And sometimes a rather meaningless and irritating one, as most aphorisms are.

Now I wait.

Father God, I ask you for power for my mother, and I ask you to take my father quickly if he is not to be healed. Help us, his children, to know your grace in this time of grief. Bless us. I praise you. Amen.

end of day twenty-one, the last day

End of day twenty-one, the last day
It has been a long fast. Tomorrow I am going to write down all my observations and see where it has all led me.

The cramping, the coldness I feel constantly, the runny nose, the hunger pangs, the digestive system problems, the light headedness, all these I believe were ultimately worth it.

I feel a closeness to God I haven’t felt in a while. I am able to pray longer and maybe a little more deeply. And there were some things told me and that I have seen that were worth it.

All in all, I am glad I am finishing and I am glad I started.

It has made my church a little wary and afraid of me. Every church wants a pastor that fasts and prays, but one who fasts and prays for three solid weeks is a little beyond their pale.

I am going to continue the weight loss. I need to lose another 30 pounds at least. The fifty that I lost during this fast were a total surprise. The last long fast I went on, thirty days total, did not yield nearly this much weight. Of course, I was younger at the time. That may be why. I do not know. And I do not care. I was entirely too overweight to begin with and now I still am, just not as much.

I look forward to reemerging as a member of the dining community. My meals are going to be small and easy for a while, lest I die. Oatmeal tomorrow morning, then stir fry for supper. Something in between, maybe crackers and cheese. I bought some sale Valentine’s Day candy yesterday on sale. I may have some of that.

I do know that I will strive to never eat as much as I have eaten in the past. That is my weight problem. I eat just entirely too much.

I have not necessarily enjoyed this fast, but I am glad I went on it. May God be forever praised in my life.

Father God, I ask for power in my life and in the life of my church. Give us grace and strength to grow more strongly in you. Grant our denomination and the church in general your strength and power to take your name to the world. Give us unity. Thank you for this time of fasting and prayer. I praise you. Amen.

addendum two to day twenty-one

Addendum two to day twenty-one

I just had the most depressing disappointment. I went down to the store in south Lincoln to get the oatmeal that I intended to eat tomorrow and they were out. The next shipment was coming in today.

Now in the great scale of things that was pathetically minor. But in proportion to the amount of time I have spent in thinking about eating it, it is huge.

For the past week and a half in my twenty-one day fast, I have thought about that oatmeal. I am not sure why it has occupied such a center of importance, but it has. And I know it got ridiculous.

It is amazing again that something so small can loom so large in your mind. It is like the guy overseas who dreams of an American hamburger to the point that he has it in his mind better than hamburger can taste, then when he gets home and eats one, it is a disappointment.

I know that the oatmeal – a multi grain made up of several different things – could not taste as good as I had made it up to be. But the fact remains that I will not get it.

Ella will make me some oatmeal tomorrow. She will put dates and walnuts and Grape-Nuts in it and it will be great.

But nothing will ever again taste to me like that multi-grain oatmeal would have tasted. One of the great wonders of the world has slipped through my grasp.

addendum to day twenty-one

Addendum to day twenty-one
It has been a good experience observing this fast. I have felt the need to do this for a quite a while but just didn’t have the sand to do it. On this last day, I am going today to consider what I have gained and what I have given, what the Lord has said and what I have asked.

It has been a physically demanding fast, much more than I ever had before in my life. the super weight loss, the physical discomfort, the cramping, the runny nose, the almost hallucinogenic feelings at times. All those were unexpected. I knew I would lose weight but I never considered 50 pounds of rapid weight loss.

I have also felt closer to God so much this fast. It has extended my praying and my meditation. It has made my writing stronger, my observations clearer.

It has also made me, my wife tells me, look haunted. There is a look in the eyes of starving people that is in mine. Even though I still do not look anywhere near like I am starving, there is a look in my eye that says something is different. It is the look of an acetic, one who denies himself a lot.

I have never really denied myself that much in my life and my looks always reflected that. But the denial of food for 21 days can make a man look like that. I have noticed that it makes people a little nervous around me. I am beginning to think the people in this church are a little scared of me anyway, and this doesn’t help any.

I think they are scared because of the fact that when I came in here, there were those who had run things for a long time and had been empowered by leadership to do so. When I came in, I didn’t allow it and there was little or no give in me. Whether for good or ill these people ended up leaving. And when they did, the tension in the church was gone. Of course, so were many in the church, but the result was good, I think. I hope.

The rest of this day stands before me. Last night was difficult. I was wrapped up in an electric warming throw in my recliner watching a movie. Of course, Ella, the cold natured one was not cold. I, the warm natured one was freezing. So there I was, the little old man, sitting in his chair with a lap robe, doddering over his mulled wine. Well, it wasn’t mulled, but still.

It will be good to eat again. I had toyed with the idea of going ahead and going forty days, but I don’t believe I will. I think I have done enough damage for the moment.

Father God, I ask for more power in my life. Let me feel your presence and see your face. Force yourself on me and fill me with you. I praise you. Amen.

day twenty-one of the fast, the last day

Day twenty-one of the fast, the last day

Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Today we pray for unity and focus of mission for The Foursquare Church (that the Lord will speak to us clearly during these days of His will, purpose and plans).

Unity is our prayer today. But I do not limit this prayer to unity and focus for just the Foursquare Church. Part of my problem has always been that I am a kingdom guy. I have always seen things in a larger light than sometimes people in my denominations have. That is why I had to leave the Church of Christ. I could no longer look at the church in such a limited perspective. We are all children of God in Christ Jesus. We all serve him.

That is why the apostle Paul said what he said in 1 Corinthians 12:3 above. You agree with me that Jesus is Lord and we are one. Everything else is commentary.

So many churches cannot realize that. They see themselves as the receptacles of the grace of God and defenders of the faith. All others are holders of false doctrine and out to destroy. Even many Pentecostals see themselves that way, even though God has poured out his Spirit on just about every denomination in the world.

Even Episcopalians – who have no real backbone when it comes to living with the world – and  Catholics – whom many see as the mortal enemy of Protestantism – have received the blessing.

I was reading a history of the Assemblies of God that mentioned their dismay at the outpouring of the Spirit on the Episcopal and Catholic church back in the 1960’s. They knew it was real, just as it had happened to them, but that was not the way they wanted. So many of them resisted it, standing athwart God’s will shouting Stop!

But it happened anyway. Then there was the Jesus People, then the great charismatic move of the early 90’s, of which I was a part.

The church is bigger than her parts. When we realize that, we begin our move towards unity. Unity is not uniting under our idea. Unity is uniting under God’s idea. When we realize that, we attain unity.

I will admit, though, I like the Foursquare Church’s idea of the gospel, that is why I became a part of it. I had been in isolationist church churches too long to join another, and I looked hard before I became a part of it. It is not perfect and there are many flaws, but after all, we are all flawed. And we still serve.

Father God, I ask for unity in the world. I know that it seems presumptuous for one man to ask something that so many have asked, but I do anyway. Give us unity and give us strength in it. Move your sovereign will over  this world and bring them to you. Thank you for the Foursquare Church and for my participation in it. Bless them and keep them. Thank you also for your presence in my fast. I praise you. Amen.