Fasting Part 2

The fast I chose for the past six weeks was movies and TV.  Let me tell you it was kind of hard. I am the type of person who if I am in my room cleaning or just relaxing I like to stick in a movie and even if I am not sitting there and watching it I like to listen to it.  Then there are also times where if I have a stressful or down day I liked to put a movie in to get into a different world.  One of the hardest things for me was one night I had gotten back to our house at Sandy Cove at about 3 after a couple days at home. Well I ended up being there until about 9 by myself.  Let me tell you all I wanted to do was watch a movie.  I was feeling a little down and wanted to get in my little world of movies.  I almost broke my fast…I almost went to a movie theater also.  Sad, I know but thinking back on that night and other times that I had gone to see movies I realize that I use it as my crutch to not think about life and its hardships. 

I am not going to lie…I technically broke my fast for Thanksgiving.   With the agreement of the other Convergers, I watched the Macy’s Day Parade.  Every year my family watches the parade and even this year my sister and brother-in-law came over just to watch the parade.  I realized that if I correctly used movies and TV it can be good.  It is a relaxing mechanism and can be used for socialization.  It is all a matter of balance, balance, balance. 

During this time of fasting, I did use my spare time more effectively.  I listened to more music instead of movies.  I also got a chance to actually read a non-fiction and found that I like to relax by working on some jigsaw puzzles.

Also, I learned that everything you do affects others in some degree.  With TV/movies, there were a couple times when I walked in to the room, people had to turn the TV off, or I had to be anti-social because the TV was on so I couldn’t go into the room.  I also got to experience the other end of it also.   Renee fasted from listening to music and we had to be considerate of her and not listen to music while she was in the vehicle.  It was hard especially when I was driving to River Valley Ranch the week or so before. So part of what I learned through this experience was learning to be considerate of others.

So for those of you who are on this journey with me I would like to challenge you to think of something that you feel you can't live without and actually live without it for a couple of weeks.  It doesnt have to be 6 weeks like we have done but it def. is rewarding.  I have actually been off of my fast for just under a week and now I am more careful with what I watch and how much I watch it.  I have more time to do other more productive things with my life :)