The Discipline That Reveals

There is something different about choosing to step away from food, from noise, from distraction. Not because you have to, but because you want to see what remains when those things are gone. This Lent, my wife and I leaned in more intentionally than we ever have before. We began with a 72-hour fast, and then each week we practiced 48-hour fasts, with another 72-hour fast during Easter week. It was not perfect; we missed one week. Life interrupted at times, as it always does, but it was consistent enough to become something more than a practice. It became formative.

That word has stayed with me. Formation. Not information. Not performance. Formation.

“You are what you love, not what you think.” – James K. A. Smith

Fasting, I am discovering, is not primarily about deprivation. It is about the exposure of desires. The first 24 hours are always the hardest. Physically and mentally, there is resistance. The body protests and the mind negotiates. Every habit built around comfort begins to surface. Then something shifts. After that first threshold, clarity begins to emerge. The noise quiets, the body adapts, and the mind sharpens. It feels as if the signal finally rises above the static.

In many ways, this mirrors what we know about cognitive biases. Our minds constantly take shortcuts to process the world quickly, but those shortcuts can distort reality and shape how we see ourselves. Fasting interrupts that process. It slows things down just enough to reveal what is actually there.

And what is there is not always comfortable.

Spiritually, this season has been deeply enlightening. We prayed more. I spent much of my reading time focused on spiritual formation. We unintentionally stepped away from social media, games, and television. In that space, something began to surface that is difficult to fully describe but impossible to ignore. I feel closer to God. Not in a purely intellectual way, but in a way that feels attentive, as if I am learning to hear again, or perhaps learning to listen for the first time.

“Be still, and know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:10

Stillness, however, has a cost. When you become still, you begin to see. Not just God, but yourself. And what comes into view is not always what you expected or hoped for. Some of it is quiet. Some of it is revealing. Some of it is unsettling.

One of the more sobering realizations this Lent came through conversations in my men’s group. A friend and I began to recognize something in our lives that Dallas Willard describes as contempt. Contempt is not simply anger. It is anger that has settled and hardened into something more enduring. It is what remains when anger is no longer active, but also no longer resolved.

You reach a point where you simply do not care about the person anymore. If they were gone, it would not move you. If they needed help, you might ignore it. This is something deeper than anger or even hate. As Willard describes it, you no longer see them as bearing human dignity. They become less than a person in your internal world.

That was the unsettling part. We both believed we had forgiven people. We had moved on. It no longer bothered us. But what we began to realize is that we had not actually forgiven. We had moved from anger into indifference, and that indifference had hardened. We did not feel anything, so we assumed we were free. But we were not free. We had simply stopped caring. And that is not where we thought we were.

What struck me was the progression. You do not simply arrive at contempt. You move from anger into hate and then into contempt, and if you want to come back out of it, you do not skip steps. You move back through anger again. That realization alone made this season worthwhile because it reframes what healing actually is. It is not about bypassing what is broken or pretending it is no longer there. It is about walking back through it. We have to deal with it as it is, not as we wish it to be, and that means facing its raw pain.

I saw just how real that was when I tried to explain this at lunch to my wife and Mary, a friend from work. In the middle of a crowded restaurant, I broke down and cried. I could not hold it together. It caught me off guard, but it also told me something I needed to hear. I had not healed. I had managed it, buried it, moved past it in some external sense, but I had not actually dealt with it.

So I realize now that I have work to do in this area. This is one of those rooms in the castle that still needs cleaning.

There was another realization as well, one that felt quieter but just as significant. As my friend and I talked, we discovered how similar our backgrounds were. Similar struggles, similar patterns, similar wounds. I realized I had felt prompted to open up about these things before, and I had not. There was a small voice, and I ignored it. Maybe out of fear, maybe out of pride, or maybe because I simply was not ready. He knew it was embarrassment. We are men and we have been told we need to suck it up and deal with it. Yeah, that’s it. 

That raises a difficult question. How much of our healing is delayed not because the path is hidden, but because we do not take the step? You might say that is just regret speaking. Perhaps. But not all regret is destructive. Some regret is instructive. It points, it reveals, and it teaches. It reminds us that next time we should listen. Perhaps this is part of spiritual formation, learning to recognize that quiet voice and trusting it enough to act.

“We need to find God, and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness.” – Mother Teresa

Physically, we both saw results. I lost about ten pounds and my wife just under that. But that feels secondary to what was happening beneath the surface. The deeper work was not about weight. It was about alignment. Aligning habits with intentions. Aligning attention with what matters. Aligning the soul with God.

I am left with this thought. Maybe I was not ready before. That may be true. But readiness is not something that simply appears. It is something that is formed through choices, through discipline, through moments like this. Through fasting, through prayer, through listening, and through stepping forward even when you do not fully understand where the path leads.

Life is a dance, I guess. And sometimes you only learn the rhythm by moving.

“Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.” – Dallas Willard

Excerpt

This Lent revealed more than discipline. In the quiet, clarity emerged, hidden struggles surfaced, and the voice I once ignored became clear. Growth may not be about moving faster, but about finally listening and taking the step we once avoided.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!