How do you fight your battles?
So I have to tell you about something super cool that happened
to me a few weeks ago. But first I need to give you a little background.
My relationship with God has become much stronger in the past 10 years.
However, I’ll be honest, sometimes I crave
to hear from Him...and I don’t. My friends talk about their
really cool dreams, and I ask God to give me dreams, but no cool dreams
yet. I just listened to a podcast
in which a woman talked about hearing a word of the day from God. When I ask God to speak, sometimes I feel like
He is silent. It can be very frustrating. However, that’s part of my learning to trust when I don’t hear what I want, and it’s also part of
my listening. For those of you who like the enneagram, I am a seven, the enthusiast, which means I like to have fun all the time and I don’t really enjoy silence.
Anyway, onto my super cool story: My family went to Hilton Head Island toward the end of July with my parents and my brother and sister-in-law and very cute nephew.
Now let me preface this by saying how much I love the beach. I feel so relaxed when I drive on the island and
I love the sand between my toes, the waves, and swimming in the
ocean. I loved to bike ride and I also loved to play putt-putt at the
beach, much to my husband‘s chagrin. I always told my husband it would
be fun when we had kids because then they could
play with me, and he would not have to! However, things turned out a
little differently. As many of you know I am in a wheelchair right now
and cannot ride a bike, swim in the ocean, or play putt-putt. We had
gone a little early to meet my grandmother, aunts,
and cousins who were there for the weekend. We had to take a
shuttle to the beach at their place and could not get into our condo
yet. My sweet mom had rented a beach wheelchair, which is awesome, and
that is putting it mildly. It allows me to go to
the edge of the water through the sand; however, it has huge tires that
would not fit on a shuttle or in any type of car. So my children and
other family went to the beach, and I wanted them to, but I was also
really, really sad. Before they left my
oldest son put headphones in my ears and played the song “Surrounded
(Fight My Battles).” I tried to wait until they left, but tears begin to
roll down my cheeks as I listened to this song and turned on the
Hallmark channel for my grandmother. The Hallmark
channel is great and all, but not really what I wanted to be doing on a
beach vacation. My parents were going to the grocery store while the
others were at the beach, so I decided to go with them. I turned my
headphones off and left them at the house to go
to the grocery store. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the grocery
store at the beach on a Saturday, but my brother describes it well when
he says it’s one of the five worst experiences of his life. It is mass
chaos, and it seems like everybody on the island
ended up at Kroger at the same time. My mom had a list a mile long and
my dad was trying to navigate my wheelchair through all the people. It
was really maddening! I felt like crying, but I couldn’t put my
sunglasses on in the middle of a store. How pitiful
would it be to have tears rolling down your cheeks in a wheelchair in
the middle of Kroger? I just stayed silent and began to pray because I
was so discouraged. As we navigated our way through the chaos, Kroger
began to play my new favorite song, the one my
son had just played for me! I was a little shocked, and I thanked God
for reminding me that He was right there. I told my dad, “Isn’t that so
cool that Kroger plays Christian music?” He had no idea what I was
talking about. He said, “Haley, they didn’t play
that song, it never played.” But I had heard it as clear as it had been
in my headphones. God reminded me that although I felt surrounded, He
was fighting my battles! I didn’t have to feel discouraged and it wasn’t
for me to try to fight my battles. God would
do that, and He does do that. My prayer for all of us is that when we
are surrounded, we will surrender to our great God and let Him take
over. God will fight our battles when we let Him.
“ Surrounded (Fight My Battles)” by UPPERROOM
“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world
does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the
contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.”
2 Corinthians 10:3-4 NIV
