One of my favorite debates in Lent is what “counts”. The season is famously 40 days. But that’s only if we don’t count Sundays. So, do Sundays count as Lent or not? Yes. And no. It depends on who you ask.
What we’re invited into, however, is a season of self-discipline, which involves the practice of keeping fasts. The parameters around how you do it change, but the expectation that we all do it remains.
Most of us are keenly aware of the challenge of keeping a fast. We expect that breaking it is easy. Mostly because we link our fasts with desire and therefore struggle with not indulging our habits as desires.
Every fast is made to be broken. And this is why we must uncouple fasts from addiction. Fasting is a pause. An opportunity to restrain ourselves. So that we might then live more intentionally.