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Fasting for Families, Parents, and Children

Young Families

March 16, 2022

blog

Jenna Bruni

 
Fasting for Families
adapted from Traci Smith’s book Faithful Families for Lent, Easter and Resurrection
 
 

I – Instead of: Giving Up screens or reducing screen time 

Try: Heading outside 

We all use screens, we use them for work, school and just plain for fun. But while we are outside, leave the screens inside, just enjoy the outside. Let’s slow 
 
Challenge: How many hours can you log outside this Lent? 
 
 

II – Fasting for Families 

Instead of: Giving up sugary drinks 

Try: Drinking Water 

We take clean water for granted, for much of the world it is a luxury. That is why we are supporting Living Water this Lent. 

 

Challenge: How many days can you drink water with your meals instead of something else? 

 

III – Fasting for Families 

Instead of: Giving up meat 

Try: Enjoying more fruits and vegetables 

Climate experts tell us that by eating less meat we can help reduce the amount of green house gases given off by animals bred for food. 

 
Challenge: How many different ways to make or types of fruit or vegetables can you try this Lent? 
 

IV – Fasting for Families 

Instead of: Giving up shopping or spending 

Try: Making something you would normally buy 

When we just buy what we want we often don’t buy what we actually need. When we make things we can be both specific and only make what we need, but also creative in how we do it. 
 
Challenge: Can you make 5 things you would normally buy this Lent?
 
 
 
Fasting for Parents 
Traci Smith, who I think is just brilliant, wrote about fasting during Advent, not a season normally associated with fasting. The following is paraphrased from her post.

 

Fast from Social Media (In part or altogether) 

There’s a wide range on thoughts about social media and I’m definitely not in the “eww, it’s evil” camp. I love social media. I feel connected to friends far away, I have conversations with clergy colleagues around the world. I get great ideas for artwork and sermon preparation. I’ve also experienced a calm and quiet when I’ve turned it off, only used it between certain hours or taken “social media free” days. Give it a try, maybe? 

 

Fast from your Phone 

iPhone users: “Do Not Disturb” is your friend. It’s a setting on your phone where you can set it to not ring, or buzz, or beep, or ding or anything. You can even set certain “favorites” who can get through in case of emergency. Every night at 9:30 I go through a process of setting my phone to “Do Not Disturb” and also setting each app that has banner notifications (in my case text, phone and gmail) to “no notifications.” That means if I check the time on my phone in the middle of the night, there are no texts waiting to be read, no emails staring at me, no missed calls. I turn it all on in the morning and figure out what I’ve missed. It was really hard the first week or two. Now it’s become a place of peace and rest. I know people can get me in an emergency. Freedom. 

Another type of mini-fast for heavy phone users (like me). Put your phone far, far away for short periods of time when you’re doing something important, like talking with a friend or playing with your children. I put mine in another room or turn it off for 15 minutes, a 1/2 hour, an hour, four hours. (Four hours sometimes sends me in to cold sweats, but I’m working on it.) I can’t control nuclear launch codes from my cell phone, nobody needs me that badly. I’m redefining urgent. Maybe you are, too. 

Maybe an advent fast would mean trying one of these two disciplines every day from the first of December until Christmas Day. Turn your phone off every night at a specified time, all month. Commit to one hour of no cell phone use every day so that you can replace it with something important: being with family, reading a novel, creating art. 

 

Fast from TV 

I’ll never forget a sermon I heard from John Ortberg where he said “Nobody sits down for a couple of hours of mindless TV watching and then gets up and says ‘Man, I feel great!‘ Everyone laughed, because we knew it’s true. TV is like a drug, sometimes. We zone out, we just sit there and pass the time. It’s not that we can’t ever watch TV, but we know when it’s getting unhealthy. After I had Clayton I went through this period of TV watching that I think was truly like some sort of addiction. I would get up to nurse him, flip on the TV and just sit there, zoned out and looking at nothing, for hours. The cure for me was the radio. 

 

Fast from Unhealthy Habits 

Maybe advent is a time, just like lent, to think about what we’d like to give up or limit in order to gain something new. Maybe the person who most needs a gift this advent is you. I started to list off some of the unhealthy habits, but it looked judgmental. I don’t know what’s unhealthy for you and what you need to limit or eliminate, but I know you do. Give yourself a gift. 

 

Other Fasting 

Maybe some of these will spark your imagination as well: 

  • Fast from putting yourself down (“I’m not doing enough at work or home or relationships”) 
  • Fast from driving everywhere — Can you walk or bike or take a bus? 
  • Fast from paper products or excess trash 
  • Fast from eating out or driving through
 
The point of fasting during advent is not on what you’re giving up, it’s on what you’re gaining. 
 

So, the time with the phone in the other room is time to focus on something else. The money not spent on a gift can be given to a worthy cause, the smoothie instead of the donut helps show respect for your body. All of these things aren’t easy, they’re hard. They’re disciplines. Just like with lenten disciplines, they’re easier practiced in a community. Find a friend or partner and share what you’re giving up this advent. What do you have to lose? What do you have to gain? How will Christmas Day take on new meaning? 

Related 5 Simple Spiritual Practices for Advent (for individuals or families)November 29, 2014In “advent” Spiritual Practice: Bible Art Journaling, Getting StartedJune 10, 2015In “Bible Journaling” Day 9: Delight #NPCAdvent2015 #AdventDecember 10, 2015 Posted in advent, Christianity, Spiritual Pra
 
 
 

Fasting for Kids

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting… when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father who is unseen… Matthew 6:16-18 
 
I’m going to use a very silly example of fasting. In the summer you fast from school. You don’t go to school so you have time to do other stuff. Fasting is like that, you don’t do one thing so you have the time or the money to do something else. 
 
During Lent many people fast as a way to get closer to God. Let’s say for one day a week you didn’t play video games, you could spend that time doing something for other people or for the environment – you choose. Or if you didn’t eat sweets for a month (I know FOREVER), your family could take the money that you didn’t spend on all that stuff and give to folks who don’t have enough to eat, or to Living Water, an organization helps people get clean water – again, you choose.
 

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