I walked late into my Sunday school class last weekend, in time to find a roomful of over fifty people sharing, one by one, a highlight of their summer. As I sat listening to the brief and happy stories of various vacations, I mentally panned through the days that filled my last three months. So many good things: a week at the NC shore with Bill’s extended family, a week on Long Island with my extended family, and five days in California with friends, solitude, a seat in a cafe that looked onto a garden, a pen in my hand. And other days, so many other days full of my children, and friends, and my husband.
But as I said, I came in late and sat at the end of a row of people who had already shared and so never had to have “my turn.” That seemed just as well. Ask me about this summer and I will tell you that it was not what I expected. It was not– after two summers of writing curriculum and working on a Masters thesis, after two years of learning how to work full-time again, this time as a mother– the creative and emotionally restful summer I thought I needed.
I thought I needed that. But who’s to say about these things?
Who’s not to say that, emerging triumphant if not utterly exhausted from those two intense years, what I really needed was to don ill-fitting armor and brandish a sword too heavy for me? I finished the school year and returned from a beach vacation to discover that I was engaged in a battle already raging. I backed into it unawares, but then immediately it consumed my attention, and for the past several months I have been somewhere near the center of the fray. It’s an incessantly bloody business– the constant attention to peeling away the callouses growing on my own heart, the fending off of the seemingly reasonable criticism and even hatred that wants to take root there. That part of the battle is one I’ve fought before. It demands relentless vigilance. It is not pleasant. And it goes against everything that is Me: the justification of Self, and its affirmation, and safety.
But this battle was worse than the others. The warfare of our Enemy is always of the guerilla kind. We have no standing armies facing one another across an open field, no distinctive ugliness or foreign uniforms to separate good from bad. In the jungle of my soul, my friends are painted like my opponents. Their words sound like half-truths and false comfort. And my greatest Friend is invisible, only peripherally present. His words come to me over a great distance, reeking of loss and self-sacrifice, asking me to engage in this battle in ways that, I know for certain, Won’t Help. Praise Him, indeed. I am fighting for my life. A song of praise now means inattention, means loss, and why aren’t You helping me here?
The Enemy, in fact, has the greater appeal– at least from the outside. His words are true, in the smallest and most familiar sense. How many times, I wonder, looking back over these months, did I capitulate and run to him, only to find, in the final moments of my approach, that his breath is death and he is hungry to eat me alive?
And while, looking back, I can say that I got in a few good blows with my sword, I think I spent most of the time trying to find my shield despite vision blurred from crying. I was running for my life, my feet were bare, the flaming arrows dropping on every side. Why is the Truth so quiet and the Lie so loud?
It’s over for now, this battle. The Enemy has packed up and moved off, sent, no doubt, by the warning cry of Someone who knew I had had enough. He’s watchful about that, I know. But I am still, I think, sitting with my head down, still trying to catch my breath. My sword is still a little bloody, my shield is yards away, my feet are still bare.
I am straining to hear them, His words, coming at me. Will they come? “Well done.” Was it done well, or did we win this one by the skin of our teeth? Or are these questions just residual warfare? Am I fighting still?
The days and their priceless minutes keep coming. In my awkward armor I get to my feet. I could tell my Sunday school class about my summer, but I am walking gingerly now across a windswept battleground. I am going to pick up my shield, to find shoes for my feet.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Peace to the brothers, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. Ephesians 6:10-17, 23-24.
