Not to bring up food during a 21 day fast, but … if you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be? 

I would be a pressure cooker. 

I’ve done a lot of work over the years to heal these tendencies, but at my worst, I could cook a pot roast in under an hour just by overthinking, worrying, analyzing and sheer effort. 

That’s a lot of pressure.

What these 21 days of prayer and fasting are revealing to me is that I put a lot of pressure on things that do not matter for eternity. And, rather than trying to relax my way out of my pressure-cooker tendencies, I need to put more pressure on the things that matter for eternity.

Hear me out.

People often try to help pressure cookers like me by telling us to relax, not to worry so much and not to work so hard. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that if I take pressure out of one area of my life, I redirect that pressure into another area. It’s just how I’m wired. For example, late last year I had a season of not working. For the first time in a long time, I had no work pressure on me, and it was really nice. But what started to happen? I incrementally took all that workplace pressure and started to put it on my life as a stay-at-home-mom. If I wasn’t aware of my tendencies, I would’ve turned into a Frankenstein of Miss Rachel, Mr. Clean and Betty Crocker. 

Rather than beat myself up, I try to find the healthiest way to be a pressure cooker. How can I use my planning, achieving and busy tendencies to bring me (and others) closer to God? These recent days of praying and fasting have given me a powerful new understanding of how to do that.

So far for me, these 21 days have looked like fasting from social media during the week, responding to the twice-daily push notifications sent out through the First Free app (Prayer & Fasting at 7 a.m. and the Gospel of John Reading Plan at noon), and recapping the day’s readings and praying together with my husband before we go to bed. 

The push notifications have been especially helpful for keeping my focus on the Lord throughout the day. They’re hard to ignore unless you swipe them away, and they interrupt one of the primary sources of my busyness and distraction—my phone! Also, it turns out, having a Bible reading plan that I can literally check off when I am done works really well for my productivity-loving brain. 

But it has been so much more than just checking boxes. For the first time in a while I have begun to put more pressure (good pressure) on my spiritual life and the result is that doing so is sucking pressure away from other areas of my life that don’t love me back. 

As a mom with little kids, I typically spend my days concerned about whether I’ve given them enough attention, if they’ve had too much screen time and not enough vegetables, if the house is clean enough. Pressure, pressure, pressure…

But guess what?

Jesus doesn’t really care how much screen time my kids had today. He doesn’t care if they ate boxed macaroni and cheese instead of something homemade and organic. He doesn’t care if the floor is a minefield of Barbies or if I chipped away at Laundry Mountain. 

He doesn’t care if your car is washed or if your driveway is free of ice. He doesn’t care how many extra calories you ate last night or what you benched at the gym this morning. He doesn’t care how much money you have in your 401k or how your investments are doing. 

He does care if we have spent time with him today.

Luke 10:38-42: “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

The thing that people get wrong about Martha is they assume that stopping what she was doing and sitting at the feet of Jesus would have been the easier decision for her. They assume she must not have really wanted to sit at Jesus’ feet. They don’t understand that maybe she … couldn’t?

People like me know that, for Martha, stopping to sit at Jesus’ feet would have required far more effort than continuing to run around her house and do what needed to be done. Perhaps even an impossible amount. She would have physically strained herself as she quieted the to-do list running through her brain. She would have felt every fiber in her body rebelling as she stopped and sat down and stayed.

But what did Jesus say, again?

“Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

To be honest, I’m not sure if I have let my spiritual disciplines lag because they are private and more easily concealed than, for example, Laundry Mountain. Or if it’s because I know so well that grace covers my spiritual shortcomings and I’ve taken too much liberty with that truth. Whatever the reason is, I am thankful for the way these 21 days are revealing my need for more structure and accountability in my spiritual life. And not just structure for structure’s sake, but structure that brings life and peace and fruitfulness that lasts.

Yes, I’m still busy. Yes, I’m still routine-oriented and driven by things that need to get done. I believe God made me that way. But, this time, those things are filling me up and pointing me towards eternity with my Savior.

Heavenly Father, thank you for these 21 days of prayer and fasting. Thank you for using them to remind me and open my eyes anew to what is better and what will not be taken away from me. Help me, Lord, to strive less. And when I do strive, let it be for things that matter to you and bring me closer to you.

Amen.