What She Had Forsaken
New Plans For A Worn Heart
She surveyed the scorched earth around her and proceeded to lay down the last of her weapons. Her bleeding fingers unsnapped the straps that held her coat on and she took it off along with her helmet and she slowly sunk to the ground finding no comfort in the pine needles that were her resting place in this moment of seeming defeat.
Transformed from warrior to ordinary woman, she looked around her and knew almost immediately that she was hopelessly lost. There wasn’t a soul in sight and she knew that this time she was on her own to find her way out of the mess she was in. There was a dawning realization that it was she who had gotten her to this point and it felt shameful and for a moment she was grateful she was alone in this place. She’d signed up as a warrior against all counsel and she’d gone into battle ill-equipped but full of self assurance that she knew what she was doing, where she was going and how it would all end.
On countless occasions she envisioned fiery battlefields with the enemy on their knees with their weapons, exhausted, broken and unable to go on. She admittedly relished this imagined defeat and pictured herself victorious upon this battlefield none the worse for wear because she knew with near certainty that her reasons for fighting were the right ones and that she had God on her side in this battle. She’d grown unwittingly arrogant as time had gone on—the product of a seeming “win” here and there—and as she had marched across the landscape stepping over some of her enemy having paid the ultimate price, she was lulled into a false sense of victory ahead of the end of the battle. As a warrior, this unseen armor of arrogance was almost necessary for a woman unknowingly uneducated in what would be the final result of all she had prepared for in the weeks leading up to the launch of her stint as a warrior. Surely God would understand the need for what she had equipped herself with and except for a few moments along the way of temporary quiet contemplation about her choices, the roar of the battle call was stronger and solidified any decisions she made for the equipping of herself.
In the end, however, here she was on her knees on the forest floor with nothing left but prayer and her Bible and an exhaustion that had overtaken her leaving her unable to even pick up that Bible. With only a few faltering breaths left to utter a prayer, from somewhere inside came her words to Him:
“Lord, what have I done? Help me Lord, please help me.”
Her heart began to flutter and her world became black and it seemed even her Savior had forsaken her in this defeat and she couldn’t blame Him one bit for she had chosen this path. She was, of course, wrong about being forsaken and was not yet privy to how He was moving in her life working in unseen, unimaginable ways. But here on the battlefield, with no one she could trust to carry her to safety, she again uttered a prayer hoping the blackness would lift and her heart would right itself and return to a steady beat. She needed her labored breathlessness to become reflexive breathing again so that simply existing wouldn’t feel like a massive effort anymore.
There was a heavy price to pay for entering the battle field so self-assured and she was paying it but in the silence around her in this moment there came a whisper and all of her answers flowed in like a gentle stream on a spring day.
It hadn’t been about her all this time. Oh, she had made it about her and she had turned doing so into an art form. She had turned to person after person from within her imagination and blamed each one for each scar she bore from birth through life. She’d taken responsibility for many of her choices but still there was the need to point fingers and to blame and worse yet to take up arms against each person. But for every swing of a sword and ejection of a bullet from a rifle, there wasn’t an accompanying swell of victory within her chest rather what had taken place was a slow, imperceptible death of a heart born for more than was being asked of it by her. The fluttering in her chest and the accompanying blackness around her was evidence of that and now the calling she heard was less about winning against the enemy and more about placing trust in her God to do what was in His plan for her life and those that had harmed her.
She began to realize some things in this moment and one was this:
Her enemy had wanted her demise. Her enemy had wanted her end just as much as she had wanted its end. Her enemy had arrogantly taken up arms and stalked her day and night throughout her life and she had felt the result of its works on her. Her enemy had laid plans that included pain and confusion and death and her enemy had nearly won and while she was broken and tired and finished, her enemy was not and it was for this reason that she knew something had to go differently than it had. She’d matched her enemy bullet for bullet, bomb for bomb, fire for fire and somehow here she was lost and alone with the bitter taste of solo fought victories in her mouth. What had once seemed so sweet was but smoke on a scorched battlefield and a loneliness she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Her realization, while grand, was hardly strength for her worn mind and body rather it was a great humbling and reset for her.
She had become her enemy.
She had become all she most hated and she needed to do something different and do it soon or life as she knew it would end for good.
So, here on her knees she gathered her strength, drew in a breath and uttered another prayer for mercy and mercy came sweet for her as did instruction she would not ignore this time. Counsel told her to lay down all arms, humble herself and begin to trust fully in her Savior and while mercy came swiftly, the changes in her came slowly but they came steadily and strongly.
She threw into waste her long-tattered battle plans, her weapons and her now well memorized battle cry. She said goodbye to what she had once loved and turned to what she loved most and had herself forsaken. The humbling she exacted upon herself was (and is) an undoing that was necessary for survival and while it was painful it was welcome and she succumbed to sweet mercy and grace. She’d spent so long in the persona of her very enemy that she’d forgotten parts of her own humanity but what she knew for sure was that the time had come to remember it all and to begin the healing process.
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