Against the Gales

I like mountaintops and shorelines.

Inhabiting them, you must contend with the wind.  Gusts rip the breath right out of your lungs, throw sentences back at you, tangle your hair and flatten the hood of your raincoat against your face.  You gasp for air against air, your whole body braced against the force.

I’ve stood in winds so high they threatened to move me.

And that’s strange, because as humans we remain convinced of our solidity in, and ownership of, the material world.  But it’s a wild, sobering thing for the wind to press against you and push you a step or two back from where you stand.  You think of tornados and derechos, and houses tossed around like matchsticks.

I did not think of my day-to-day as being buffeted by such gales.

My life on the surface seems calm.  I wake up in the mornings; take a walk.  I drink coffee.  I work. I leave work.  I take another walk.  I crochet, listen to music, a podcast.  I talk to my husband and send cards.  Sometimes we stir outside for a dinner or an event or an obligation.  This is the daily rhythm of my life and even on the stressful days I inhabit an ordinariness.

Except that I don’t.

I wake up, and the clamor of the day immediately comes at me.  My phone pings with Bible verses and notifications and last night’s texts and today’s errands. The internet is a nonstop scroll of information both wanted and unwanted.  Colleagues and friends and family move in and out of my hours nonstop with questions, comments, thoughts.

At the end of every day, I’m tired.  I realize I stopped thinking about God seven hours ago.

Metaphors of war and battle in Scripture tend to excite people.  We always assume we’re being asked to pick up a sword and shield against the Enemy, or if not against him then to fight something in Jesus’ name.  We talk about conquering this or that for Christ, forgetting that even the archangel Michael refrained from “pronouncing a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you’” (Jude 1:9). 

But the most significant battle is both smaller and more vital.

That battle is right here, and it is against yourself.   

C.S. Lewis noted that:

The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.

To do this is the battle, and not just in the morning but all day long—especially at the stressful times, or the difficult times, or the sad times.  The time when your mood is not up to snuff or everything around you appears to be contradicting everything God says is true.  This is standing in the wind: bracing yourself against the buffeting of the everyday, reasserting God’s kingdom is already here and working against perpetual gusts of distraction, chaos, amusement, clamor.

It is tiring work that requires great discipline.

When people talking about going to battle for Christ, I often want to ask if they’ve conquered themselves for Christ yet.  Have they staked out that territory for the Lord? No?  If not, more pressing matters remain to hand.  Heaven knows I haven’t.  I fight and fail this battle every day. 

These small victories are the stuff of which greater triumphs are made.

What I am starting to understand is that, in the everyday, you must train yourself to see and respond properly.  You must perpetually depend on the Holy Spirit to call you back and to remind you that:

• this thing that is happening to me is not actually the priority of my life
• whether I understand what is going on is largely irrelevant
• God’s kingdom is here and triumphant in spite of what I happen to be looking at
• my feelings do not dictate the truth
• my desires and beliefs can quickly grow disordered and misrepresent me to myself
• faith and hope require grit in circumstances that would seem to belie them

If you can remember this in the morning when your phone is ringing off the hook, or your children have done something terrible that has resulted in a school conference, or when you forget your lunch and to prepare for a meeting, or when nothing is going right—then there will be very little to hold you back.  But until we have mastered such tiny breezes, we will barely find ourselves able to stand against the greater gales that wound us.

So much of spiritual life is practice.  Not practice for battle; the practice is the battle.