Waning Fast-ly.

I'm closing out my third day on the Daniel Fast. I have been given superior knowledge, and it's that I am not a cheerful faster. I'm a crabby faster. And a hypochondriacal faster. Like so: I will just DIE if I don't eat something real.

I am alive. I proved my delusion wrong.

I feel bad for complaining about fasting, so I try to just go with the very subtle eye-rolling while I eat, and an occasional sigh. But then I feel bad for being unhappy at all. This is supposed to be about spiritual wisdom, about seeking God through self-denial.

Whatever it's about, it's not fun.

Spiritually, I feel that the process of denying myself has in fact caused me to more often seek out Christ in prayer. Nothing incredibly profound...so far, things like "Jesus, I know you had it much harder, but I really want some Chinese food, I think I'm going to die, be with me." And then I imagine that we both have a good laugh, and I go back to this god-awful rice and beans mixture I made.

I also understand now how much pressure this kind of thing can put on a person to actually "force" a spiritual experience. When you've had nothing but whole wheat tortillas, and kidney beans for a couple of days, you start to feel the devastation of what it would mean to get to the end and not have any major spiritual breakthrough. I suppose that if you are really into fasts as an act of submission this wouldn't be as much of a concern. But I want some wisdom, damnit.

As a final note, I can say that as a result of the fast, I have spent more concentrated time in the scriptures. I'm not sure if that is also a residual effect of the need for justification (i.e. anything that will help to crank out a vision from all of this), or just increased attention to spiritual issues in general, or if it's a spirit-given desire to be with Him. My impression is that it is the latter.