In addition to not eating any bread during Lent, I am going to try to fast from worry.
On the Fridays of Lent, when I am abstaining from meat, I will do my best to “abstain” from worrying about the one thing that worries me most on that day. That one thing that I am worrying about most or that worries me most on that Friday – I will abstain from that one big worry, while I am abstaining from meat. I am just not going to worry about it, just as I am not going to eat goetta or a hamburger. No meat and no worry on Fridays.
On every other Lenten day, I am going to try to “fast” from worry. In a playful spirit, following the customary guidelines for fasting from food, I will allow myself to worry once a day for a reasonable amount of time, and then to worry for two other shorter periods of time which together will not equal that one, main reasonable amount of time – and, of course, there will be no snacking on worry in between.
This may sound silly, unless you have a tendency to worry like I do, which takes a lot of trust out of life as well as a lot of joy and enjoyment. Maybe I’ll be able to give the worry to God, and be done with it. Maybe I’ll just wind up putting it aside until Easter, when I’ll gorge myself on worry, after fasting from worry for so long. We’ll see.
In any case, Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) was quite the day: I worried all day long about as many things as I could think to worry about, hoping that beginning today, Ash Wednesday, God does something new with me.
With Open Doors 