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Healing Our Land Begins With Me Fighting


I've learned about myself that I'm a fighter.  Maybe it is my Irish-German heritage.  Maybe it is my wild flower growing up.  Maybe it's a bad attitude.  Maybe it is a warrior and pioneer spirit inherited from my family.  Maybe it is a gift.

However, it came...I want to fight when things are wrong.  When people are hurting or treated badly or if injustice is happening.  Cowardliness infuriates me.

I remember a time that I was with my two younger boys in the Safeway parking lot when I heard a woman's distress.  I saw a man in a camper through the window punching a woman over and over again and was overcome with a fierce desire.  Handing the phone to my boys and sending them in to call 911, I  marched to the camper fully prepared to beat the....out of the man.   

My storming gave the woman a chance to get out of the camper with a tiny baby she was holding so I ushered her to the store.  Boy was he lucky the police got to him before I did.  

Then I shook.  Standing in the parking lot watching the man handcuffed and taken into police custody, I loudly proclaimed to my boys in front of the bystanders.  "Boys, if you ever stand in a parking lot like these people, while a woman is getting beat and they do nothing like the men in the parking lot then I will have your heads."

I can't tell you of all of the times that my boys called from the bathroom at school or ran in the door to tell about a domestic or bullying situation testing my resolve to act.

I intentionally taught and gave my boys opportunity to take challenges and "calculated risks."  

We cannot respond to danger with fear or with hiding out.   

So when the bombs went off in Boston, I wanted to fight.  I'm angry.  I'm hurting and broken and furious.  

While watching coverage I was proud of Americans who ran to the chaos and pulled away the fencing and metal barriers to reach the wounded.  

A defiant spirit raised its head within me and pride swelled.  This is America.  This can't happen here.

Then my mind turned to a book I'm reading about when God lifts His hand of protection off a land.  

I thought of the prayer that I pray for my boys to stay under the umbrella of His protection so they will be protected.  

I remembered Isaiah speaking of choosing blessings or cursing.

Have we as a nation so walked away from God that He has taken His protective hedge off of us?  

Humbleness swept over me. 

Humbleness is not to be confused with passivity in my opinion.  King David was a man after God's own heart and was a warrior.

Humbleness in knowing the reality of His Sovereignty.  

That our turning to Him will heal our land and our continued defiance will continue to harm us.

Healing our land and humbling our hearts is up to each of us.  It is not an excuse for us to sit on our butts and use God as an excuse to be lazy and stop fighting.  

It is all about who we rely on, turn to and trust in.  

Trusting IN the Fight.

 


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