fight hard
“Mom, I need you to pray with me about something.”
It’s the first thing she says to me—she who is both daughter and sister by grace, she standing framed by the car window, the afternoon sun making her hair all blazing light. The breeze rushes in, stealing the heat.
I smile, nodding. “Okay. What shall we pray about?”
I don’t know when she figured it out, or exactly how, if the Spirit planted the understanding in her heart or watered a seed God allowed us to place there awkwardly, but already she knows that the only answer, the only help comes Him.
She tilts her head, and I see the shadows pass across her face, the remembrance of something hard. She tells me, her eyes filling up, that she and her best friend have been fighting every day for the past week. “And today it was really bad, Mom,” she says. I can see that the wind has chaffed her cheeks. Her blue eyes shine. “And I know that it’s the enemy who’s doing it, that he wants us not to be as close. And we don’t want it to change our friendship.”
I feel the breath of the Spirit, whipping like the brisk wind, testifying to Word we’ve not yet memorized together, this sister with whom I share an other-worldly vocabulary.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12). Truth echoes deep.
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood. The phrase stops me cold these days, every time I struggle in a relationship, every time I want to cast blame instead of grace, judgement instead of compassion, resentment instead of love.
So, at home, we sit knee to knee, and I ask her, “What did you two fight about today?”
“I’ll tell you, but it doesn’t matter,” she says, looking at me through those soul-beautiful eyes. “It’s just that the enemy doesn’t want us to be close. I know it.”
I am touched by what my daughter doesn’t say. She offers no accusations against her friend, no conclusions, no judgments. She says not one disparaging word, nor once lapses into “well she always.” She makes no attempt to discern her best friend’s weaknesses, to make herself look like an innocent. I can tell that she offers me the details of this day’s conflict out of respect, but not out of any necessity. Then she finishes, blinking, with, “But we both know what’s going on. We prayed together at lunch.”
In my mind, I can see the two of them, holding hands across a cafeteria table, doing fierce battle together, not caring who hears, who watches. I can see Zoe’s lips move, earnest, whispering into the too-loud, while kids laugh and trays bang right next to her.
Zoe watches me, serious, reading my face. “Can we just pray now?”
So we clasp hands, bowing heads, and she asks, pleading, “Help us not to fight, Lord, I love my friend,” and I echo, feeling the words more deeply than the saying, “We want to love like you, to be like you.”
I’ve only just recently learned to discern the real enemy, only just—in my physical adulthood—figured out how to fight well. At Zoe’s physical age, I hardly knew that Christ fights for relationships not in them. But already, my daughter knows that her friendships are worth fighting for, that the only productive battle happens spiritually–against the tempter instead of the one who falls, weak.
On Sunday, I ran my first marathon. A precious friend stood with me in the gray, blue-lipped cold beside the start as the sun rose, snapping my picture in the dawn light. She encouraged me, spoke to me of Kingdom things, smiled love into my first effort. She hugged me and sent me running, then found me three or four miles later, calling my name from beside the road, lifting a fist in the air. At mile seven, I blinked, catching sight of three women huddled at the roadside, holding signs with my name—my name!—on them. I lifted my arms in the air, waving to three more of my dearest friends, and they jumped and shouted for me, “Go, go,” they yelled.
“I love you guys!” I called to them, realizing each one wore a toboggan my mom had crocheted for them last Christmas. A cord of three strands is not easily broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12), I thought. And smiling, I ran harder, faster, full.
About three miles later, I saw my steadfast friend again, smiling from the side of the road, taking my picture. She called to me, “You got this, girl!” And I smiled, thinking of her jogging to her car, driving somewhere new, parking and jumping out again, just to be there for me.
A few miles after that, I saw my sign-holding group again, searching the crowd of runners for me. I waved, and they cheered, and one of them sprinted across the road and ran beside me. “I just want you to know that God is your strength,” she said to me, her arm around my shoulders. She’s tiny, but she ran with me, the heels of her boots smacking the asphalt. “And we love you…we’re so proud of you. You can do this. God is with you! And I can’t keep up with you anymore, so go, run! We know you’re gonna do great!”
I don’t remember what I said, some inadequate, fumbling words of thanks, and definitely, “I love you girls!”
The runner right next to me smiled, teary, “Wow. That was really great,” she said. “I know. Wasn’t it?” I said, and a few others cheered assent. And friendship carried me lighter for miles, it pushed me on, it made me strong.
And the friend who began the race cheering me on, who showed up every mile she could to yell my name, to call, “Not by your power, by His power,” stood in the middle of the road just beyond the finish, her arms wrapped protectively around my children. I spotted Kevin first, lifting his fist in the air in triumph, positioned at the side, just before the finish. I blew him a kiss, and then I ran to my friend and my children and the medal around my neck.
My friend stood holding me up, letting me lean against her while Kevin drove the car to me, telling me how happy she felt to share in my important moments. My legs trembled from the effort and the cold, and I felt physically empty but emotionally full. And I knew that my friends had lent me their strength all day, that God had used them to carry me through, that they had been His voice, His arms about me. And I thought, “This is worth fighting for.”
We are strong together. Is it any wonder the enemy tries to tear us apart?
And this I remember, knee to knee with my daughter, reaching for her as we finish our prayer. I wonder what she sees when she watches my friends and me fighting hard to love each other, if somehow she has seen the wealth of grace they are to me.
I pray it so, whispering into her hair, closing my eyes,
“Fight hard, baby girl. Fight hard for your friendships.”
