At some point during pregnancy, I fell down a rabbit hole of natural childbirth books.
They promised something unexpected after natural delivery: bliss.
Elation.
A kind of transcendent high that followed unmedicated delivery.
I’m not particularly crunchy, but I am curious. I decided to try it.
Let me spare you the suspense: I did not feel bliss.
I felt like someone who had just survived something violent and was relieved it was over.
Grateful? Yes. Proud? Sure. Euphoric? Absolutely not.
For weeks afterward, the memory of the pain would surface at night as I tried to fall asleep.
(To be clear: I don’t regret it. There were benefits. But the promised emotional payoff did not arrive.)
That experience quietly rearranged something in me.
It made me more cautious about promised highs.
Ever since then, when someone makes a sweeping promise, part of me wants to test it.
Later, I found myself staring at a verse in the Bible that makes an even bigger promise:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles” — 2 Corinthians 1:3–4.
The God of all comfort. Comforting us in all our troubles.
Curious again, I had to see what would happen if I took Him at His word.
What if I got a little uncomfortable doing the things He asked us do?
I began fasting intermittently.
I am not a natural faster. I’m the type whose blood sugar drops fast and hard. (I’ve since learned that what you eat before a fast matters more than I realized.)
Let me tell you something: fasting has not become easier for me while I’m in it. It’s still uncomfortable. Still stretching. Still exposes every soft edge of my self-control.
But here’s what surprised me.
While I cannot vouch for the emotional ecstasy of natural childbirth, I can report that this promise — the one about comfort — has held with intermittent fasting.
The comfort rarely comes on my timeline.
I want microwave reassurance.
God seems to prefer a slow Texas Barbeque smoker.
There’s often a gap between the discomfort of fasting and the relief.
Not hours. Sometimes days.
And then, almost quietly, perspective shifts. My spiritual senses sharpen. Insight lands. Peace settles in like it was always on its way.
Not dramatic.
But undeniable.
Eventually, I tried experimenting again in a very different arena.
Street evangelism.
Even typing that makes me squirm.
I know my strengths. I know where I feel fluent, natural, steady. This is not that. This is the opposite. My body tightens just thinking about it.
Around that time, I attended a seminar with Tony Robbins. One line lodged itself in my brain:
“If I say I can’t, then I must.”
Layer curiosity on top of that. Add the nudge of the Holy Spirit. I went.
I would rate my performance a 2 out of 10 on a very generous scale.
I was a ball of nerves. My body held the stress for a full day afterward — tight shoulders, shallow breath, that hum of “why did I do this?”
I asked God for comfort.
For the first 24 hours, nothing.
Silence.
Then (almost 2 days later!), spiritual insight began pouring in. Clarity. Wisdom. A kind of interior strengthening I didn’t manufacture on my own.
It felt less like a warm blanket and more like an ice bath after a hard game — bracing, shocking, but unmistakably restorative.
That kind of comfort is different.
God’s comfort isn’t anesthesia.
It’s reinforcement.
I’m beginning to suspect this is why we’re so often called to step out of the boat.
Not because discomfort earns points. (It is finished.)
Not because boldness is glamorous. (It is stressful.)
But because comfort — real comfort — often waits on the other side of obedience.
It doesn’t arrive instantly.
It doesn’t soothe on demand.
It fortifies.
Natural childbirth promised euphoria and didn’t deliver.
God promised comfort.
So far, He’s two for two.
