The Place of War

Sometimes this is a place of war:

Sometimes the hollow spot in the middle of the living room, surrounded by journals, a full laundry basket, and a blanket not warm enough for a cold night is the place you fight your battles.

Sometimes you wake up still wearing a red button-down shirt, jeans, and purple socks you donned to try to keep warm.

Sometimes you're shivering and you don't know if it's from cold, lack of sleep, or the fact that Satan is still hounding you furiously.

Sometimes your face looks swollen in places you didn't even know it could swell and you still feel your chest heaving from trying to breathe through tears that stuck so long you couldn't find breath.

Sometimes you stomp your foot in anger because you're trying to intercede but the prayers won't come out and you feel completely inadequate.

In fact, you feel like a failure.

Sometimes you try to write prayers and they come out as sloppily transcribed bullet points barely legible and even less intelligible the next day.

Sometimes you give up and fall onto the pillow you know won't support you enough and give in to creating a stiff neck as you whisper, "Help me. I can't do this."

And that's when He whispers back Be still, and know that I am God.

And as you crack open old journals, full of scribblings from days gone by, you find accounts of other battles, some fought on the same ground, and you remember you survived that one, and you'll survive this one.

And sometimes you find quotes you scribbled on another day:

Fear will look us in the face and tell us as many lies as our insecurity will buy. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. It's okay to stare. (Bob Goff)

What if your greatest fear, your heaviest burden, has been given to you for such a time as this? (Randy Frazee)

Joy is like wine - it can run the sweetest in the crushing places. (Ann Voskamp)

And sometimes you stand up, fold the blanket, put the pillow back on the couch, close the journals, and face the day, because you have to come to the place of knowing that the battle isn't done, but you can rest in the Arms of the One who already won the war.