A Different Kind of Invitation for Lent - The Beauty of the Wilderness
- Rachel Dodson RD. LDN.
- 23 minutes ago
- 10 min read
By: Rachel Dodson, RD, LDN - Eating Disorder Dietitian and Meal Coach
A few months ago, I wrote a blog called “a different kind of invitation for the New Year.” Since that blog was written, the calendar year has remained the same, but we have changed seasons in the church calendar.
I’m not part of a faith community that explicitly participates in Lent, but I LOVE the church calendar. I love that God designed rhythms and seasons and ways throughout the year to discover Him in the ordinary day-to-day. The church calendar helps followers of Jesus mark the passing of time. The church calendar is made up of six “seasons” - Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. Pentecost is followed by Ordinary Time which lasts until the next Advent season begins.
The church calendar is simply a tool we can use to remember God - who He is and all He has done for us. I am so prone to forgetting God’s goodness and love. The church calendar is like a rhythmic anchor to, despite what my personal season of life may look like, rediscover once again how good God truly is and how much He gave for us to restore our relationship with Himself.
What is Lent?
Last Wednesday, we began the season of Lent. Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday, lasts until Easter Sunday. Despite the exact date changing year to year, Lent always starts 46 days prior to Easter Sunday. The 40 days of Lent (excluding the 6 Sundays from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday that are considered feast days) are marked by longing for resurrection. Lent forces us to face the reality of sin and death. Lent is the long, dark winter as we wait for spring. The word “Lent” actually comes from an Old English term “Lencten,” which means “spring,” or “springtime,” or “lengthening of days,” ultimately pointing to renewal.
In Matthew 4: 1-11, Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness. This is one of the accounts in scripture that is reflected in the season of Lent. In the wilderness, Jesus fasted and was tested by Satan. And. Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 4:1). His time in the wilderness was also preparation as his public ministry was about to begin. There was great purpose in his wilderness season.
What does any of this have to do with eating disorder recovery? Well, I think the journey that is recovery can often feel like a wilderness, one that usually is longer than 40 days. But we can learn from Jesus’ time in the wilderness to give you strength for the journey - because recovery may feel like winter, but the hope of spring is coming.
Jesus was certain of his identity.
Satan attacks Jesus’s identity in the wilderness. “If you are the Son of God…” (Matthew 4:3). The enemy of our souls is not creative. His lies always contain that subtle hint of, “did God really say…?” The enemy wants you to doubt that God loves you and who God says you are in Christ. Right before Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he was baptized. At his baptism, the Father spoke over him, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” Jesus entered into the wilderness knowing who his Father is, knowing that he is loved by his Father, and knowing that his Father delights in him simply because he is His son. If you are in Christ, that is your identity. A child who is loved, who your Heavenly Father delights in.
A few years ago, I heard a quote from Jessica Setnick, MS, RD, CEDRD-S stating the 3 keys to eating disorder recovery are, “a turning point, a reason to live, and an identity outside of your eating disorder.” You are not your eating disorder. In Christ you are complete (Colossians 2:9-10), redeemed and forgiven of sin (Colossians 1:13-14), chosen and appointed to bear fruit (John 15:16), and made new (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are adopted into God’s kingdom because of the finished work of Jesus. You are a child of God. Jesus shows us that even in the wilderness, we can be confident of our identity in him.
Jesus was dependent on God.
Lent is about dependence. Dependence is learned and lived in the wilderness. In Matthew 4, Jesus points us back to Deuteronomy 8 when God speaks to the Israelites:
“Remember that the Lord your God led you on the entire journey these forty years in the wilderness, so that he might humble you and test you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you by letting you go hungry; then he gave you manna to eat, which you and your ancestors had not known, so that you might learn that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Jesus was fasting from food in the wilderness. There are many good reasons, one absolutely being that if you're in eating disorder recovery, where fasting from food is not wise. Fasting is a means, but it’s not the end goal. The end goal is dependence. It’s acknowledging “I can’t do this on my own.” It’s the recognition of the need for God’s intervention. It’s declaring that we need Him to shepherd us through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4) and that we need Him to transform the valley of weeping into a place of springs (Psalm 84:6). And we can’t do this on our own.
Lent is giving up our coping mechanisms because we know they can’t treat the deeper wound we are trying to heal through them. Lent is acknowledging we need a healer. We are the patient and are dependent on the great physician himself (Mark 2:17).
There have been seasons where I have participated in Lent - I fasted from social media, I read 40 Days of Decrease, or I focused on giving away my time. There have also been years where I’ve done nothing because the season snuck up on me, or I simply couldn’t imagine giving anything else up because I was in an inner winter.
But a few years ago, I sensed God inviting me to give up structured exercise during Lent. This good desire to move my body had become ultimate because I was worshiping it. God was inviting me into deeper dependence through the exposure of this disordered relationship I had.
And - it was really, really hard. I didn’t navigate that season gracefully or perfectly, and following that season was another entire year of God doing a deeper healing in me. Some seasons, we are meant to grow by subtraction. The wilderness is often marked by subtraction and loss, but it’s an opportunity to learn a deeper level of dependence on God.
Jesus allowed the wilderness to form him.
The reality is, we will experience wilderness seasons in this life. So Lent is an opportunity to enter into a voluntary wilderness season of self-denial to train us for when life thrusts us into involuntary wilderness seasons.
The scripture that comes to mind is Philippians 3:10, “My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death…” We can’t know the power of his resurrection without knowing the fellowship of his sufferings. Lent is saying yes to journeying to the cross with Jesus. It’s shedding the earthly illusion that we can do it on our own. It’s gaining God’s reality through reduction. It’s about seeing our weakness as the very thing that makes space for His strength. Jesus allowed his wilderness season to form him and we can too.
What Lent is & isn’t
“Our physical body will either be the medium in which our soul grows up, or it will be a deterrent stunting our soul's development.”
1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.”
You can read more about what scripture says about food and our bodies here, but Lent is an opportunity to live out the Gospel story in our bodies. It’s an opportunity to experience the hope of resurrection personally every year. But we cannot have spring without winter.
Lent is not a diet or a way to justify disordered behaviors. The season of Lent is not even a biblical mandate, but a liturgical tradition. Ultimately, Lent is an invitation to surrender. Jesus Christ himself fought and ultimately defeated sin by bodily surrender (Isaiah 53).
Life outside of the Garden of Eden has been infected by sin. Because of sin, we can’t see our bodies through God's eyes anymore. Because of the enemy’s lies, our bodies have become a source of shame we feel the need to cover with metaphorical fig leaves, or projects we feel like me must work on until perfected. Sin distorts our relationship with God, others, the earth, and even our own bodies.
When God created the world sheltered in His love, we were naked and unashamed (Genesis 2:25). When the lie of the enemy entered into the sinless world God created, we noticed our bodies. We partnered with the lies of, “I am not enough and the way I look is not enough,” instead of partnering with the truth - God blessed our bodies and called them good. They are good because He made them and we reflect His image (Genesis 1:27).
How can the truth about our bodies be restored? Christ himself came in a body. Jesus had the full range of experiences of life in a human body and did not sin (Hebrews 4:15). He redeemed our bodies through the breaking of his (Luke 22:19). Jesus won the battle with our own bodies (John 19:30). Jesus resurrected in a body (Luke 24:39). He sacrificed his body, so we don’t have to spend our lives trying to perfect or control ours.
The first person Jesus appeared to after he resurrected was a woman in a garden (John 20:14-16). The serpent told a lie to a woman in a garden (Genesis 3). So what did Jesus do? He orchestrates an entire scene to make things right by telling the truth to a woman in a garden. Jesus reveals himself to Mary - a woman whose body was dehumanized throughout her own story. But God himself went to her and restored her, and her relationship to her own body. In Jesus, our bodies are called good, we are redeemed, we are filled with His spirit and restored.
So however the Lord leads you to participate during Lent this season, remember God. His life, death, resurrection - the lengths He has gone to to restore our bodies. He alone can turn our winter into spring.
The Hope of Spring
In the winter is when you realize the voids you feel are actually longings. Longings that were covered up by the fruit bearing summer or the fall harvest.
In the winter we wait. We wait for dead things to come alive again. We want the hope of spring to come quickly - color, light, life. But we can’t rush what God is making stronger in the winter, even if we feel weak. “He will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in the early spring.”
In your tender mercy God, use the time of winter to share with me secret joys that lead to fulfilled longings in the spring. Help me embrace the winter. Help me cultivate patience, even in this slow and painful season.
In the winter, it looks like nothing was happening, but Love was alive all along. Healing. Restoring. Making all things new. Breathing resurrection life into dreams.
Thanks be to God.
References & Resources:
https://thedailygraceco.com/products/the-church-calendar-focusing-on-christ-through-liturgical-living?
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Eating Disorder Dietitian and Meal Coach
Rachel graduated from West Chester University, Honors College XVI with a Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics in 2018. She completed her dietetic internship at Immaculata University in 2020 and graduated with her Master’s degree in Clinical Nutrition from Immaculata in 2022.
Rachel is a non-diet dietitian who believes in intuitive eating and is a HAES (Health At Every Size) provider. She is passionate about walking alongside her clients as they seek to heal their relationship with food and their bodies, and re-discover the joy of eating! Rachel works with both teens and women suffering from eating disorders, disordered eating, and other nutrition-related conditions.
Rachel has extensive experience treating eating disorders and is personally recovered from disordered eating. Being on the other side of that battle, she wants to help others quiet all the noise, no matter what season of life they’re in. She became a registered dietitian to help others on their own path to discovering freedom with food, exercise, and nutrition. Rachel offers fully virtual online nutritional counseling sessions in PA, NJ, MD, SC, DE, AL, and FL, and coaching worldwide.
Rachel loves to spend her spare time with her friends and family, including her siblings and their kiddos! In her free time, Rachel is most likely grabbing a coffee with a friend or is on a walk listening to her favorite podcasts. She loves to ride her bike, read, watch romcoms, and bake cookies.
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