Lois Lyda

Lent began this week.  I sometimes get flack for fasting. “Be careful, honey,” my mum will say every year in a disaproving tone as I embark on this journey of self-denial.  As Richard Foster says, “The contstant propaganda fed to us today convinces us that if we do not have three large meals a day with several snacks in between, we are on the verge of starvation.  This coupled with the popular belief that it is a positive virture to satisfy every human appetite has made fasting seem obsolete.”

But an incident of a few years ago reminds me, as I begrudgingly surrender to the fast this year, why I “afflict” myself with fasting. 

One thing that is very important to our immediate family of four is family vacations.  It is a rare sliver of consolidated time spent exclusively together once a year.  After the birth of my second child, surrounded by an island of diapers and nursing bras and a sea of no sleep, I was dreaming of sweet vacation bliss. We booked a vacation to St. Maarten a year before our scheduled departure.

A few months later, my sister-in-law began planning her wedding.  Out of all the weekends in the calendar year, she decided that she wanted to get married on the weekend we’d be in St. Maarten, and expected that we’d be able to reschedule our trip.  However, the plane tickets were already booked - cancelling was not possible.  Ben and I, coveting our family time, felt that since we’d made our plans innocently without any knowledge of even an engagement at the time, that she’d defer to us.  We genuinely assumed she’d change the date when she found out we couldn’t change ours – but she didn’t. 

Instead, the whole extended family banded together and accused us of selfishly planning a vacation on the day of the wedding!  We were shocked at the accusation, and frustrated, and hurt. We pledged not to return for the wedding. 

Upon making this decision, my once pristine relationship with my in-laws went catapulting into the carribean.  For almost a year, there was tension, deep-seeded anger, and resentment between the two sides.  Hurtful words and emails were exchanged, doors were slammed.  Meanwhile, both the wedding date and the vacation date were set and refused to budge.

It is worth mentioning that my in-laws are also Christians.  We should have been able to work this out in a civilized, loving, Christ-honoring way.  But sin was firmly rooted in us.  Throughout this time, I was praying for God to help me.  I was praying for Him to rid me of my obsessive evil thoughts and feelings towards them that would rise up uncontrollably and surface at random, even during prayer.  But no break-throughs occurred.  We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas alone.  It was awful.    

Then Lent came.  And the Great 40-day Fast began. In my faith tradition, this means I ate a “Daniel Diet”, as I like to call it, abstaining from all animal products. I also cut back on entertainment factors in my life (for example, I ceased watching useless shows like “the Bachelor”). And I tried not to buy anything unnecessary, and to live a life more conducive to prayer, less busy and noisy.

With the addition of fasting, I continued in prayer about this grave family conflict.  Gradually over the course of the 40 days, my anger died, my evil thoughts were cut off. Finally and most crucially, a desire for peace and forgiveness was born.  I was humbled exceedingly.

We cut our vacation short to attend the wedding.  Our relationship has since been restored 10 fold to what it was even in it’s previous pristine condition.  I can only attribute this outcome to the fasting that I believe weakened my self-will and strengthened my prayers. 

“Fasting can bring breakthroughs in the spiritual realm that will never happen in any other way.” Richard Foster

Coffee hour duty is spiritual warfare for me. 

Those Sundays, I am like an inactive soldier reporting for boot camp.  When that one weekend a month arrives, I am in for a serious kick in the pants.

For me, cooking for 50+ people is not a delectable desire, it is a duty that usually ends with a culinary death, and leads to spiritual suicide.  Truly, coffee hour duty has been one disaster after another.  Whenever that Sunday approaches I moan, I stress, I panic.  I start cooking, boiling, steaming. . . hormonally speaking.  The night before, the verbal battery begins when I spout off all the reasons my coffee hour offering will be doomed.  For example, last time I made beans, in my dimented state of mind, the congregants had already complained about them being bland and crunchy before they’d even made it in the crock pot.  Another time, I was so fired up about getting my fruit salad to the church on time, I put the china dish on top of the roof  and drove off full speed. 

  So this time, I prayed a special “coffee hour duty” prayer as I boiled the eggs the night before.  Piece of cake, I thought, as I climbed into bed.  Just peel, scoop, and mash in the morning.

 At 8am the peeling process wasn’t as easy as I had imagined.  The whites were gluey and stuck to the shell, making my so-called hard boiled’s look like mutilated poached eggs. 

“They don’t look cooked all the way” said my observing husband, 15 minutes before our scheduled departure, as I’m standing at the sink with my robe still on estimating my losses, and wondering how a seemingly simple task  has come to this.  So I frantically reboil them, as my hormones also begin boiling.  It doesn’t take but a few minutes, and I see that eggs have started to crack and ooze.  Subsequently,  my emotions also begin cracking and oozing.  Soon, my spirit is completely scrambled. 

For 30 minutes, I cry,  &  declare I can’t possibly go to church in this forlorn state with such forlorn looking eggs.  Then I drink a coke for consolation as I nurse my emotional battle wounds on the couch. 

But  then it occurs to me how important it is that I not let my temperamental emotions and temperamental eggs spoil my day and  my meager offering to God’s people.  So I peel myself off the couch and pull myself together.  Later than usual, we make it to church along with 50% of the eggs, paprika and all.

Silly as it may sound, as I reflect on the morning’s mahem, I am convinced that this was a war waged by the Evil One.  The battlefield,  my mind (and the kitchen);  the assailant,  my thoughts (and the devil’s eggs).  He used the culinary comotion to ruin my spiritual appetite.  In the end, did I devil the eggs, or did they bedevil me?

  One of the things that bothers me about Sunday worship is the break down of the family. And it’s not just parents from their children; siblings are quarantined off by narrow age margins of as little as six months.  And while the adults can enjoy the service without shushing or pointing a disciplinary finger, what are their children doing?  Certainly, they are being bred for worship.  But are they learning to be true worshipers, or are they learning to be the center of their own worship? 

Let me explain.  In most churchest I have visited, there is a multi-colored “kid zone” that alarmingly resembles a McDonalds playland. Equiped with slides, toys galore, maybe even french fries and a coke. . . does the children’s church resemble “church” in anyway? The children have fun, for sure, but do they learn anything about how to worship?  At best my son might scribble over the words “Jesus loves me” with a crayon (an activity that might take him a total of 10 seconds), but since he can’t read, did he learn anything about what worship looks like?  Instead, for two hours, with all his needs catered to, wildest fun guaranteed, he is taught how to be a consumer of stuff, a lover of pleasure, a worshiper of self. 

When our first-born was a few weeks old, we ventured out to a large church down the road.  I wasn’t about to place my newborn into the hands of a stranger in a room already teeming with helpless babes, so I brought him into the sanctuary with me.   I felt like I was sneaking him in;  we sat in the back to “hide him”, as if I was breaking the rules by wanting to worship with my new baby rather than without.  Within minutes my feelings were validated, as an announcement was made: “There is excellent child care for a reason  -  please use it.”  A thousand preying eyes pounced on me.  Embarrassed, I relocated to the nursing mom’s room, and watched the rest of the service on the TV monitor, separated from my husband and the worshipping community.  It was a very isolating experience, church sponsored motherhood aparthied.

When we first came to the Orthodox church, one of the things that attracted me was the sound of a crying baby, the shushing of a mother to her child, the sound of childrens voices mixed with mature ones. It was refreshing to see kids and parents worship together, approach the challice for communion as a family, raise  united voices in love for God.  It was heavenly. 

Even now after two years, I keep expecting kids to be discharged, but they never are.  A two hour liturgy doesn’t deter them from zealously attending church school after the service while the adults fellowship and break the fast together.  It is a suppliment, not a replacement for the worship service.  During this time, bible stories are taught, the liturgy explained, hymns practiced, bible verses memorized.  And this is why they call it “church school”; preparing, training, educating, growing children to be worshippers. 

Now that I have two toddlers, I faintly lament the loss of “dropping the kids off” in the morning.  It certainly would be much easier.  But I do not think it would be better, for them or for me.  It is my primary job (not the church’s) to raise my children to be worshippers of the living God; to be reverent; to be prayerful; to stand in awe of Him; to bow with humility before His throne; to be attentive to the Word of God.  As the saying goes, children “Do as I do, not as I say.”  It still remains that the best way for my children to learn how to worship is to watch me. 

What will become of our children if we let our churches spoon feed our children when they need solid food for spiritual growth?  If they spend the first seventeen years of their church life being catered to, playing games and having fun, they will never transition into “adult” worship.  Instead, they will become a generation who is disenchanted with the Church because it doesn’t meet their needs.  A generation who thinks the world revolves around them.  A generation with no respect for authority and no self-discipline.  I don’t want to see my son drinking out of a spiritual sippy cup at seventeen, do you?