Fight the good fight. We've all heard that saying before. But what does it really mean? I have always attributed it to mean fighting for something worth fighting for, staying in the game, holding on when times are tough. I said in my last post that I felt bad that this blog is rather depressing but there was nothing I could really do about it. Six of my children have died. That's just plain depressing no matter how you look at it. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe through my pain, through my struggle, through the words of my heart poured out on this blog there is some hope to be found, some joy to be found, some meaning and purpose that far exceeds anything that is of this world.
"Fight the good fight" originates, as many sayings we have do, from the bible. "Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses" 1 Timothy 6:12. Somehow the last line of the sentence, "of the faith" has generally been dropped from the saying that most of us have heard. But when I ponder this saying and think over the entire verse it brings new insight. Admittedly, I have not been fighting the good fight lately, or at least I haven't been fighting for the particular things I wish I could have been. It's hard to fight the fight of faith when you are struggling just to hang on to it, your hands are soaked in your own tears and they are slipping. Now you are holding on just by your fingers and they too are wet and slipping. You feel yourself slipping further and further away and you are terrified you will lose your hold completely but there is nothing you can do about it. You are trying so desperately just to hang on. That is the fight I have been fighting. Just trying to hang on. Hang on to my daily routine, my responsibilities as a wife and mother, just trying to hang on to my faith. I have never been much for New Years resolutions and even when I do make them, I rarely keep them. But I suppose if I want to make one for 2013 it would be this, to get back in the fight of faith. There's nothing wrong with fighting to hang on, fighting to just get by and survive. That's part of the fight, part of the process. But at some point you have to get back to fighting the good fight of faith. So what does that mean? It doesn't mean the fight to get through the every day pain and struggle that comes with my grief is over. It is still very much here and is a battle I must continue to fight. For me though it means that battle takes on a new form. I must fight the one who fills my mind with lies and makes me believe I deserve the tragedies I have experienced, the one who makes me feel inferior and broken, the one who convinces me I am being punished for something, the one who fills me with fear to the point that I just sit and await the next tragedy, the one who makes me doubt that my God is big enough to handle this, to resolve this, to heal this, to redeem this. I must lean not on my own understanding but on trust (Proverbs 3:5). And it will have to be an all out war, one where I show up with my entire arsenal ready to fight, reaching out to take hold of the eternal life to which I have been called, reaching out for the eternal Jesus who I confessed my need for and gave my life to in the presence of two special witnesses. The good news is, once I grasp Him, my fight is over. He takes over from there and He will fight the battle for me, not just fight it, but fight it while He stands in front of me, protectively shielding me from the onslaught that will surely come.
I am reading a book right now entitled "Get Out of That Pit" by Beth Moore. The pit she describes has most certainly been my residence for over a year now. A pit I was thrown into, not because of anything I did but because that's life. And life has no shortage of events that can throw even the best of us into a deep, dark pit that we feel we may never escape. I could quote many amazing insights from her book but for today I will focus on these two that have been especially profound to me. In the book of Genesis there is the story of a young man named Joseph, whose brothers plotted to kill him by throwing him into a pit (a literal one) and leaving him there to die. Beth says this of that story, "God did not haphazardly or accidentally let Joseph's brothers throw him in the pit. He had already thought it out in advance. Considered it. Weighed it. Checked it against the plumb line of the plan. He had looked at the good it could ultimately accomplish, the lives that could be helped and even saved. Then, and only then, in His sovereign purpose did He permit such harm to come to His beloved child. Had the incident not possessed glorious purpose, God would have disarmed it." Wow. Could it be that God has not just swiftly allowed Jason and I to miscarry six children, but rather He thought it over, gave it much consideration and looked at the whole picture which we cannot fully see. He saw the good He knew He could bring out of it and then, make no mistake about this, He did not cause, but permitted the miscarriages to occur and these losses, my little babies, me, my grief has a glorious purpose. Beth goes on to say, "If God allowed you to be thrown into a pit, you weren't picked on; you were picked out. God entrusted that suffering to you because He has faith in you. Live up to it. All the way up." God picked Jason and I and our children out for His special, glorious purpose. He has so much faith in me that He believed I could handle the grief with grace, endurance and yes, even faith. He wants to use me to accomplish His good in this world. I have not suffered because He is mad at me but perhaps because I am even more loved by Him. To know that God could trust me with not one, but six of his children. He trusted me to carry them for all the days they had written, to love them, to go to bed every night with my hand rested on my stomach as I prayed for them, to fight for them when I knew something wasn't right, to graciously and thankfully accept one of His children into my arms, alive and well, and then to bless me with her amazing little presence in my life. And to know that He trusted me to let them go and return them to their rightful Father when He called them, to grieve them, not perfectly but honestly, purely and openly and most importantly to honor and love God through it all, to find my way to a faith strong enough to bring glory to God in all situations, all circumstances. To know He trusts me, loves me that much causes tears to stream down my face as I write this. I think back to when this journey first began and you may remember how I shared the story of when God spoke to me through a rainbow and told me to trust Him. It has taken me four years to see that the trust He spoke of was not just of me trusting Him, but of Him trusting me. Him trusting that I would use this for His good. What an amazing honor. What else can I do but fight the good fight? Hang on tight to my God. Find a way to bring glory to Him through this pain. And rest in His loving arms. I love You always and forever and no matter what. Tell my babies their mama has the same love for each of them and that I anxiously await the day I will see their sweet faces. I anxiously await the day I will see my sweet Jesus. Until then, I have a purpose and maybe, just maybe, I am on my way out of the pit.
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