A BIG Both/And: Battle and Blessing
Over thirty years ago, Pastor Rick Warren was speaking and began by saying, the Christian life is “battle and blessing, battle and blessing, battle and blessing, battle and blessing, battle and blessing…” The repetition was intentional to drive home the point. I wasn’t present – I only learned of this message last week. Warren went on to say that he used to think that the Christian life was a succession of battles and blessings, whereas now he thinks of life as being on two tracks… simultaneously.
Wow, is that helpful. It helps me fulfill the “second greatest commandment – love your neighbor as you love yourself.” It helps me love myself better, and love others better. Perhaps it can help you, too.
I just shared with my spiritual director literally a few minutes ago that these first eight-plus days of chapter two, season two (see last week’s newsletter) have been positively schizophrenic. The battle and the blessing have alternated in unprecedented magnitude, with heights and depths never lasting more than about 30 hours – usually less. It isn’t all circumstantial, either. I got some tough “battle” news right in the middle of a very high “blessing” day, and the battle didn’t end the enthusiasm… at least not yet! Rather than think of them as sequential, it’s so helpful to see the battle and the blessing as concurrent. One may be more obvious, but both tracks are in operation simultaneously.
What I realized this past Sunday—and then needed to realize again a couple hours ago—is that there has been an underlying battle going on emotionally that I was completely unaware of. Four battles, to be exact. I became an expert feeling-stuffer for probably the first 50-plus years of my life. Val would ask me what I was feeling, and I had been so successful at stuffing that I honestly had no clue. I would often say, “You tell me!” The lists of feeling words that counselors like to give out (ahem, especially to men) have been super helpful. There’s been a lot of progress on that front, especially over the last few years, mostly in that I’ve become far more aware of trying to stuff feelings. This last week the battle was entirely underground. No clue I was stuffing pain. Old depression-era reactions were surfacing. But by not seeing battle and blessing as a both/and, and instead seeing them as either/or, I failed to connect the dots and win the battles more quickly. Sequential either/or didn’t help me like concurrent both/and would have.
Hopefully I’m sharing enough here to make some sense – years of therapy, prayer, healing, and stories are riding shotgun with each of these sentences!
When the battle is raging… Jesus is still on the throne. The blessing of the fellowship of His suffering is concurrent. Even what the enemy means for evil, God is so sovereign that He flips it around for good.
When the blessings are flowing… I’m still a broken, vulnerable human in need of a Savior. Self-reliance that de-thrones Jesus always ends in shipwreck. There is a battle raging, and our enemies are not flesh and blood.
We’ll love ourselves more healthily when we see battle and blessing as a simultaneous both/and. And what’s true within us is true around us, too. We’ll love one another better, deeper, more empathetically, less judgmentally, with more divine wisdom, and more of Jesus’ love.
I think we could say that battle and blessing as a both/and instead of an either/or is part of the answer to Jesus’ John 17 prayer that we would love each other the way He loves us!
