One gift of long recovery is discovering how many of the
things we struggle with are simply part of being human. In the beginning we
attribute all of our character defects to being alcoholic, but after time and
work and making friends with many kinds of people I have learned that everyone
is afraid, everyone has some kind of defense, and no one is loved as much as
they really want to be. And in America, no woman is happy with her bodyJ.
I also love learning that most faith traditions have been
trying to help their members with this pain of being human for ages and ages.
Each faith tradition has a version of “surrender” or “offering up” problems;
there is an injunction in every religion and every faith tradition to be
present, to be quiet, to be in the now, to listen to the voice of something
other than fear.
My spiritual director recently said to me that the Gospel of
Matthew says that we are “relieved of our afflictions by prayer and fasting.” I
had heard those words before but always kind of thought of “fasting” as an
extreme, old-fashioned measure. And maybe a tad too sacrificial. But then she
explained, using 12-step language, that “afflictions” are like character
defects and that what the Gospel writer was saying was, “don’t feed the
character defect; don’t give it more food, energy or fuel.” I loved that.
I knew immediately that what I most need to fast from is
fear. I feel fear twinges all day and I can feel when my mind wants to feed
that fear a huge meal of energy and give it more fuel. What I am learning is
that when I sense that start-up to a fear thought or a fear scenario—(and its
always some future scenario) I can say, “Nope my fear friend; you are going on
a diet”.
And of course I also need prayer to make this work. Praying
to stay aware of those first, tiny impulses toward fear, praying for the
courage to catch it and not “play with it”, and then praying for the
willingness to fast from that fear.
“We are relieved of our afflictions by prayer and fasting.”
Do you have a particular character defect that might benefit
from prayer and fasting?
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