Day 2

Okey-dokey. I've gone 48 hours now without food. That means I'm already 1/12 of the way done with this fast.

I didn't sleep well last night at all: I woke up at 3:30 AM and was up on and off the rest of the night. I fell asleep around 4:30 and then Cathy fell out of bed and woke us up. She's got us trained pretty well. She just shouts wherever she is and we come running. She's got a great life and I'm happy for her. I was one of six with two working parents and sometimes you were just glad if your parents remembered your name. So if we spoil our kid a little I'm not going to feel to bad about it. I'd rather see her secure and happy through lots of parental attention than phobic and lonely.

I had a good time of prayer with Zoe this morning. She is a much better pray-er than I am. She prayed mostly for individuals we know and are concerned about, and I prayed in a more general sense about our gratitude to be rightly related to God, for the wife and daughter God has given me, and for the ability and resolve to please Him in our thoughts and actions. I pray and think about things in Iraq on and off all day long.

Around lunch time I took a walk to take my mind off of food. The idea was good- the timing wasn't. I can now state with 100% certainty that the meal of preference in my neighborhood this Tuesday was fish. The aroma of grilling frying fish didn't leave me for more than a few steps. Zoe and Cathy had grilled fish themselves downstairs at the mother in-laws'. This makes perfect sense since the street market was yesterday, and fresh fish is sold there, which only keeps a couple days, thus the wonderful smell of fish in the air on every street I walked down, for its entire length. After awhile I began to savor the smell as a way to eat vicariously, through my nose. Hey, there's no law against it.

When I was talking to Zoe about not getting angry as easy, last night, she made the point that when you eat, you feed the flesh, both spiritually and physically. And she's right. I love her for these kinds of insights. She tried to leave some comments for me from yesterday's blog. It's too much work. I told her send me an email. If you want to leave comments, see the email address up in the title description.