How To Do Battle Spiritually Through Fasting

First, a confession so you can understand where I have been...

You see, before this summer, I had never made it through an entire day of fasting. Never! This was really a terrible dilemma for me to admit to---especially since I have been a practicing Jew for about ten years now. Essentially, this means that I had never made it through the entire Yom Kippur day of fasting...I always left the synagogue early....every year...to go home and eat. So, on the Day of Atonement when we are commanded not to eat or drink, I went home and did both! Talk about carrying around feelings of failure and lack of self-discipline! Every year, I would try and every year, I would feel let down by my own weak will. I felt so defeated right out of the gate!

This past summer I was confronted with a series of life obstacles. My main website crashed after six months, I had a horrible fight with a family member, I was drinking way too much wine to cope with it all and then to top it all off, my husband and I got into an argument and stopped talking to each other for three entire days! I was certain I was headed for divorce court. I felt completely depressed and like the biggest loser on the planet. I was not praying. I was not spending any of the time or energy into doing the things to connect with God that I know to do. I just kept feeling as if there was no point. I was in a rut...and I knew it!

Yes, I was in a pit that I had no idea how to get out of. Nothing seemed to be working for me...there were roadblocks everywhere I turned. I knew that God would help me out but I didn't even feel that I had any right whatsoever to even go to Him. I had nothing to give to anyone in my life. I cut myself off from everyone --- my family and friends. I "unfriended" over half of the people on my facebook! I was a wit's end. I was used up. I was empty, empty, empty.

I remember putting my head in my hands one morning and just weeping. I poured my heart out to Him. I said to God that I didn't care how bad things looked because if anyone could fix this mess, it was Him. I told Him I trusted Him and that I wasn't going to go one more step in my disaster of a life without Him. I told Him that He needed to show up right then and there. That I was not leaving until I got some sort of answer...and then, I remember I said to Him that if it was true that He would supply all my needs, then I was going to turn over to Him my fat, broken-down body and He could take of it because I wasn't going to feed it anymore! So...there!

It was a rather brazen thing to do and it is funny to me now but at the time, I was so serious! I felt I was at war with my own flesh! My own will! My own stupid desires that had brought me no peace and no joy. My body demanded more and more and never gave me any good feelings even after I gave it what it wanted. I came to the point where I didn't like it at all and as far as I was concerned, it was war. My desires were overrunning me and my entire reality and I was pissed! I read to give the battle to God so that is exactly what I did. I gave the entire responsibility for maintaining my body back to God Himself and let my flesh battle that!

The most wonderful thing happened then...God showed up! There was no flash of light or voice from on high but I did feel my petition had been heard. As I finished my conversation with God, there was a knock at my office door. It was my husband, who came in to apologize for his part in our terrible fight. I was floored! Forty-eight hours later, a stronger, more confident me broke my first successful fast! Two days later, I began and later completed my first five day fast. Oh...and this year, I completed my very first Yom Kippur fast.

Mallah Rych Hurst is the editor-in-chief of the online magazine The Manor Message. She is a 1992 graduate of Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. She has a degree in Speech Communication. She is the author of two children's books and a poetry book. She is married and has one son.