Battleship

Healing from a battle wound is like standing on the shore.  There are times the pain calmly laps over your feet and never once does it hinder your ability to walk-to STOMP- all over and inside of it.  Then, as the tide rises, it seems to surprise as it swallows you. Covers your head.  No up from down.  And you are left in a cloud of sand that hides your predators, and you are left with burning, aching lungs.  The more you fight this, the less energy you have to fight...this.

While I write from the edges of my heart on this blog, I keep some things cryptic on purpose.  Although written to a phantom audience, even some of those ghosts have no business knowing.
Writing heals, and it can also wound.  You can easily write yourself in circles until you feel--and welcome--familiar warm arms of apathy to enclose you.  In these arms you believe the lie that you have no strength to fight. And you stop.

It's tricky, though.

Once you are consumed in that tidal wave, be it fear or sadness, you incur less injury by being limp.  Your predators may leave if they think you already dead.  So, how is one to know what to do?

I believe, with all of my heart, that a person's mouth will be their undoing.  Words matter matter matter. So, as I write this I'm faced with a choice: do I write about the tide, all be it true, or do I write about the calm with will come?
I will choose the latter.

To follow a dream you must know it exists or you will find yourself chasing the wind. I believe my husband's dream exists. I believe in my dream. My dream is family.
Family is institution. Family is diversity within unity. Family is love. Family is God's heart.

Strong families make a strong nation. I have never fought a war of nations, but I am a soldier. Sometimes, ladies, we need to be silent. When you look at your husband in the eyes like a deer in the headlights, when your inside voice is screaming and beating words up your throat, when your burning lungs in that tidal wave have just enough air to push your very heart past your tongue...we just need to be silent and search our hearts.  This makes us soldiers.

This use of 'soldier' is not to be mistaken for being a martyr, as some wives are King of (play on words intentional). It's easy to mutter beneath our breath as we do the dishes, as we pick up clothes (am I the only one who knows where the hamper is?). Or as we submit.  I have learned that submission does NOT mean going placidly in the night as pirates devour my gold. This word encompasses a battle of fighting pirates within OURSELVES- and takes incredible force and endurance.  And some nights our battle is to walk the halls alone, again, at 2 am, holding our crying babes.
But you see...this is my life.  It is no one's job but mine to choose joy in my life.

Some would say that being joyful and trusting God through these tidal waves makes for a controlled and boring life.  Still, others ask, "Isn't it a crutch?"
Believing and trusting in the Living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the craziest adventure of...well...my life.  Boring? Not even for a minute.
Is it also a crutch? Absolutely. And I welcome these limp legs in this wave because then there is rescue. And I need that 'crutch' that is my God because I cannot do this alone.

Can you?

Don't you ever just feel like you just-can't-do-it?

I have a choice in this tidal wave, and I choose to ride these waves with generous dignity.  When I can't fight, the Lord God of Israel will fight for me and I need only to be still. And this makes me a soldier.
My battles will be fought and won and great will be my children's peace.