We packed the Jeep with our gear for the day, and Vin turned on the ignition. Country music blared suddenly from the speakers, and several of us jumped – including me, and I was the one who left it that loud.
“Sorry guys,” I said, turning it down. “I went to Grandma’s last night.” Meaning I drove home with all the feelings and tried to drown them in volume.
The Jeep has many assets, but with seven occupants, extra space is not one of them. So my floorboard was covered with essentials: purse, bookbag, extra shoes with extra socks, a small container of snacks. I held my jar of water in my lap (why do I not use a lidded water bottle like other grownups? I don’t know, just accept it and move on) and as I leaned down to grab my bag I forgot all about it and spilled a couple ounces on my lap.
Whoops, won’t do that again, I thought – though on a 75 degree Alaskan day, it actually felt pretty good.
But just five seconds later I did do it again when I reached for something else. This time fourteen ounces whooshed down my legs, all around the seat, into my purse…but mostly into a side pocket that was full of partially used tissues and a couple of ancient-yet-remarkably-absorbent receipts, because that’s how moms roll.
Menopause is something else, I tell ya.
But it wasn’t just me that day. Vin was talking about the landmarks on this road and how to find the turn we needed: You look for the long flat building, and the bent mushing sign, and the pond on the —
“Aaand, I missed it,” he said, realizing we were much further down the road, accidentally on the way to a different friend’s house.
Just so we’re all on the same page here, he’s not going through menopause.
He said it’s the leaves; there weren’t leaves on the trees when we made this drive last time, in early spring.
A couple days later on another drive, I was on my way home from Grandma’s again. All the feelings again. Always wondering if this was the last visit.
I hadn’t cried in weeks; we had a lull of sorts once she was finally adjusting. Things were looking up in so many ways that it was easier to forget this is still a short timeline and we don’t know when it ends.
She still changes every week but those changes are different – not as angry or sad anymore, so that’s a huge relief, but others that mean more decline. More confused. More tired. More in and out of consciousness and reality.
The sky was a million shades of silvery blue over a million shades of green as I drove home. I flipped the blinker at an intersection and noticed that Grandma’s hair tie – the one a nurse had pulled her hair back with, but Grandma wanted it out because she never wears her hair in a ponytail and was a little scandalized to realize it was in one, no matter how cute we told her it was – anyway, the hair tie was still on my wrist, next to the bracelet she bought me in Ireland that I wear most days lately.
According to that nurse, Grandma had slept a lot that evening even after sleeping most of the day. I sat next to her, and her head kept leaning against mine as she drifted in and out.
These are precious, thick, persevering days. Sometimes it’s just her and me, and sometimes it’s my uncles, too, when our visits overlap. We share life updates and memories aloud, and patient grief and concern in silent looks.
There are so many things we are not saying, that we don’t know how to say.
Some of it doesn’t need to be said because we know; we already know about the grief and the flesh that is raw in some places and weathered tough in others. What we don’t always know is where those tender spots are, in ourselves or others, so we are tentative lest we do damage.
It’s one of those seasons that demand a dramatic soundtrack but instead it’s filled with these quiet evenings, conversations and hugs with nurses, small talk scattered amid end of life discussions and daily care. I could hear another resident breathing in a way that sounded like her last, but the nurse assured me it’s normal.
Or, normal for now. Relatively, for this stage.
It is a season of ragged breathing, and it’s not just on this front, in this home. It’s also in our own home with kids and their decisions, and in other parts of our community with families in crisis, and loved ones battling for their mental health, and some making choices that don’t even have that excuse, and also, so many things in our house suddenly demanding expensive repairs.
Life is a war zone with skirmishes happening on several fronts, and many of them are silent, under the radar.
Some of them, in my life and yours, we don’t talk about openly because we know all too well about drawing fire, even from those on the same side. We know how people can take aim and still miss the mark, even when they mean well…and not all of them do.
If we’re not abiding, we’ll miss the Lord’s direction and shoot at anything that moves or makes noise. When we do that, we often hit someone who’s on our side, just trying to figure out their next move forward while quietly enduring the present onslaught.
If it’s felt like your home, family, church, workplace, or neighborhood is a battleground, it is: The Kingdom-minded believer is either taking ground, losing ground, or holding their ground.
We’re not really talking about physical land, of course, and we’re definitely not talking about political boundaries. That’s a “look here, not there” tactic of the enemy, and too many have been falling for it. Not to get too woo on you, but let’s be real — most of the battle is on another plane, and what we see is not all there is.
God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
— Ephesians 1:20-21
The non-physical ground we’re claiming starts within our own heart, our own personal clean-up operation – throwing open all the doors, letting the Spirit blow through and find anything we’ve avoided for so long that we’ve become seared or numbed to it.
See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking, for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven!
At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
— Hebrews 12:25-29
You’re already in the middle of the battlefield, but another blow comes: the news, the diagnosis, the estimate, the announcement, the disappointment, the explosion.
We feel numbness; it’s all too much. And then that weight in the chest, the pain in the throat. Swallowing. Blinking. Staring off into space. Everything blurs. Fear whistles overhead, and the ground around us shakes.
The enemy wants that territory back. He wants you to think you are losing ground. But —
Will you trust Me? the Lord says. Can you move through the next hour as though you know I’m already taking care of this?
My brothers and sisters, whenever you face various trials, consider it all joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And let endurance complete its work, so that you may be complete and whole, lacking in nothing.
— James 1:2-4
He’s wanting us to gain ground here, but sometimes it’s just the smallest thing in the midst of everything else that sends us over the edge, and we wonder if it’s all over. We don’t think we can hold this ground, or get this back, or take one more surprise, or handle one more grief.
Several times in the last few weeks, I’ve been there. And the Lord met me there and said, I always defended, protected, and provided for the women who bowed at my feet.
Mary, sitting at His feet to learn in the room with the men when Martha demanded her help in the kitchen.
Mary again, breaking the expensive jar of oil and pouring her savings over Him, when others were indignant at what they thought was waste.
The woman caught in adultery, held to a double standard by a crowd hungry for her bloody death but apathetic about the man who was at least as guilty as she was — probably more so, since in that culture, he had status and protections she did not.
And Jesus’ own mother, when He was on the cross and she looked up at Him, her oldest son and provider. He assigned John to care for her from then on, and did not leave her defenseless.
He modeled it for us, because we also claim ground by helping others hold their own – by nurturing the hearts of those around us, loving the Body.
We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way:
in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities,
beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;
in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love,
truthful speech, and the power of God;
with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;
in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.
We are treated as impostors and yet are true,
as unknown and yet are well known,
as dying and look—we are alive,
as punished and yet not killed,
as sorrowful yet always rejoicing,
as poor yet making many rich,
as having nothing and yet possessing everything.— 2 Corinthians 6:3-10
How do we love the Body? Love doesn’t move in self protection mode but moves on behalf of others, at our own expense.
Sacrifice, service, and leadership will cost us. It is the meal, the extra sweater in bad weather, the afternoon’s agenda swept aside to make room for what wasn’t scheduled but had to happen.
What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said,
“I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.”— 2 Corinthians 6:16
When the Body gathers, we create sacred space. The body of believers is holy ground:
Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.
— Matthew 18:19-20
This is where the battle is won.
It’s usually quiet though, without fanfare.
Your gentleness toward others and your effort to keep a tender heart rather than a seared conscience does violence to the enemy, and wrenches vast amounts of real estate from his grasp.
You must make every effort to support your faith with excellence,
and excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control,
and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness,
and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
— 2 Peter 1:5b-8
Your effort to hold your tongue and wait, to let the other finish, to not rush to fill silence with noise – these are all such small moves of faith that take the land. It is what trust and humility look like, because we know the Lord is in our midst and we don’t have to do all the talking.
Superficial moments on the surface, but momentous underneath. These are the sweetest seasons happening in the deepest grief and need and concern: uncertainty about timing juxtaposed with the certainty of His goodness and protection, while we do not know what that goodness and protection will actually look like.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power;
put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, for our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.— Ephesians 6:10-12
We submit to the upheaval of routines because certain situations have taken vivid, sudden priority and they are worth flipping our days upside down for.
Like one Monday, when a text came in that was rapidly followed by a phone call from the nursing home. Urgent prayer over speaker phone while kids ran in and out of the house, and then were quickly ushered into one vehicle with Vin while I took the other on a rushed drive across town after peeling out of the driveway and almost taking out some wandering raspberries.
But she was okay. It wasn’t time yet. We still have work to do, hearts to tend, time to hold with an open hand.
So we are here in the midst of beauty in the chaos, steadiness in the uproar. We are watching for landmarks, not wanting to miss the turn when it comes.
The time together is worth the drive. Our fellowship retakes occupied territory: The roots that run deep, the arms that stretch wide, all the ways we care for each other. This is how we hold our ground, and how we gain it.