It may look like I am surrounded,
But I am surrounded by you.
Surrounded, Upperroom
It was the weekend of my 21st birthday. I vividly remember it.
The phone rang at my mom’s house. It was oddly enough my dad. Oddly enough, because my parents are divorced and my dad rarely called. There was a subtle, yet unsettled sound in his voice. He was trying to calmly convey a catastrophe of situation.
His words were “don’t panic, but Craig is missing. He has been for 24 hours.”
I fought tears as I handed the phone to my mom chasing down every crazy thought you could think when you just found out your older brother is nowhere to be found.. As my mom hung up the phone in what felt like a moment of slow motion, I simply remember her response. She crashed as only mom’s tend to do. She collapsed to her knees and called out to the Lord. She prayed vehemently, almost violently. As a Pentecostal, she prayed in the Spirit, because there are prayers we pray that we just do not have language for.
It was not the first time I had seen my mom respond this way, this one just stood out. In all her teaching and instructing me over the years on praying, the words were flat compared to her actions. This moment, this response to the world crashing in on us, was the response of woman falling on her Lord.
Unquestionably, my mom was going to do everything in her strength to find my brother, yet she knew her strength was not enough. Everything with my brother would turn out fine, yet in that moment, I learned to fight.
Paul wrote: 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. (Ephesians 6:12)
The lesson learned was that when life crashes in all around you, you fall to the safest place, the arms of the Lord. I learned that war is not about simply standing tall, it is falling low, even at times face down on the ground. I learned the posture of victory is the same posture as surrender, arms extended up. I learned what it meant to fight.
A mama’s prayers are always important. Yet, at some point the prayers of a mom or dad are simply not enough. You have to learned to fight the battles for yourself. Someone can always pray for you, but no one can pray in place of you. Often where we learn to fight is in the middle of the battle. That is when we have to stand arms extended or fall to our knees. Our posture of war is praise. Our weapons are prayer.
I don’t know what fight you are fighting, but I know how to fight it.
So this is how I fight my battles.
This is how I fight my battles.
