WAR TORN LIVES

(Madie Hobbs – Blogmas Day One 2023)

Well, here we are! The first day of December, the beginning of the Christmas season in earnest, and the very start of Blogmas.

I wish you all a hearty Merry Christmas and hope for you all the happiness of this joyous season!

I must confess, as I have just sat down to write this post, my heart is rather heavy. I hoped it would not be so for this first post of the season, but I am assured we will turn it about by the end, as this was rather the point of the topic I have been considering.

Many of you know, on Thursday’s Lilly and I host a Bible study at our house with our closest friends, which wrapped up for this week only a few hours ago. While I planned to come in directly after our study ended, I instead sat with Lilly and two of our good friends who happened to stick around for a little while and spoke of the little mysteries of the universe the four of us have been recently considering.

One of them had just celebrated their birthday last week, and so the conversation between us naturally turned to the passage of time and the way in which we are trying to make the very most of the little lives we have. After she told me about a few of the ways she commemorated her birthday, she inquired as to whether I had given any more thought about what I planned to do after high school, and ultimately with the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, I have been cursed in this area with indecision, and I confessed that the time before me seemed to be one long, daunting journey I do not yet feel ready to make. I teeter, just now, on the precipice between 17 and 18 years old, a birthday which more or less officially marks my passage from childhood into the world of adulthood. I have felt this passage very keenly within my heart recently.

As we spoke, I was overwhelmed by the entirety of life before me and behind me. By the entirety of the decisions I have made and have yet to make. I told them about some of the ways in which I have been unsure of myself, and how, though it may seem small to the outside world, I feel as though I am weathering a great trial which I hoped to have been offered relief from by now. A trial which I did not see fit to be a trial.

While I allowed my friends a glimpse into my mind, I will confess, I felt utterly wretched.

I thought back over my life and my family’s lives this past year. While many incredible things I wouldn’t trade for the world have happened, I mainly wandered through the memories of the hard decisions we have made that have turned our lives upside down, have changed them in a way I never thought they would be changed, and I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity.

The friends I was speaking with confessed they felt much the same way. We all have been through quite an interesting year, full of joy but also mingled with pain, and we are now all trying to determine what it looks like to live, in a way, war torn lives.

But then Jesus broke in. Don’t you just love it when He does that?

Goosebumps rose across the surface of my skin, and I felt His presence rustle through the room and turn our conversation into more encouraging musings. We began to discuss what it really means to wait on the Lord and allow Him to direct us. We wondered what worry is supposed to look like when we grant Christ control over our lives. Most importantly, we reminded one another that though the last year has been hard, and the next year may yet be even harder, if we are living for Jesus, we will always be doing what we are meant to be doing, and travelling in the direction He wants us to travel.

Just before all these interesting conversations, I was flipping back through one of my favorite books in search of what the Lord wanted me to write to you about. I scanned the passages I had underlined in the volume and found one specific scene I wish to describe to you.

In the Two Towers, the second book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, two hobbits, Merry and Pippin, have been taken captive by a cruel enemy. The two companions had been on an already quite perilous quest to destroy a weapon of great evil and were captured when their party was overtaken by their foes. Over the course of many days, their enemy drags them along to the fortress of the evil they were seeking to destroy, denying them comfort, food, drink, and communication with one another.

They are both wounded, weary, and war-torn, desiring for nothing more than to return to the comfort of the little life they knew before their initial quest. They think back on their former homeland fondly and wonder if they shall ever see it again.

Just when things are at their worst, their captors are ambushed by mysterious horseman and Merry and Pippin are given an opportunity to escape. They take it without hesitation, and while wounded, tired, and unsure of where exactly they are, they rush into a deep and dark forest, where they rest for a while away from their foes.

The author describes the aftermath of their ordeal beautifully and gave me a new attitude to strive for. Tolkien tells the story like this:

“They turned and walked side by side slowly along the line of the river. Behind them the light grew in the East. As they walked they compared notes, talking lightly in hobbit-fashion of the things which had happened since the capture. No listener would have guessed from their words that they had suffered cruelly, and been in dire peril, going without hope towards torment and death; or that even now, as they knew well, they had little chance of ever finding friend or safety again.”

It is my prayer that I may be like Merry and Pippin this Christmas season. That those I am with may know that I have endured hardship and face uncertainty, but that they will not guess that it had ever been truly terrible from my speech. I hope they instead hear from me that while something may have been hard, it has also been worth it. That though Christ had fitted me with trials, I shall bear them with thick armor and a smile.

Let Christmas be our new beginning in this, regardless of what the past year has brought and the new one may bring. As we speak, let no one hear from us the dread and trepidation with which we may fear the future and have spoken of the past.

May no one hear of us the hardness of the hardship, but rather the glory of it.

Our war-torn lives are worth celebrating. Let us go on to face the coming season with a coat of armor and clean swords to face the demons ahead. Let us do so in a way that no listener will guess by our words that we have suffered cruelly, been in dire peril, and may yet experience torment and death.

For take heart, we have much hope yet.