We all carry a conflict within ourselves. Our flesh battles our spirit constantly competing for first place. I’m currently battling a conflict within myself as we speak… I lost my thirteen year old daughter to cancer three weeks ago. She died in her Daddy’s arms. She was surrounded by her parents, siblings, brother n law and grandma, yet none of us knew she was gone. We kept checking for a pulse, a heartbeat, anything we could as we were not ready to let go, but her body was tired. Her divine appointment for death happened, against our wishes…

My flesh misses my shadow.. My spirit screams “she’s with the Lord, no pain, no sickness”. My flesh wants to hold her, kiss her, see her, love her; but my spirit screams “she’s in better hands”.

For the past twenty seven years I have devoted most of that time to child rearing, maintaining the home, enjoying a beautiful marriage and writing to encourage the discouraged… I’m a firm believer when the children need discipline we are to break their will, not their spirit. I have found recently that losing my child didn’t break my will, in fact it’s stronger than ever but it did break my spirit. My will is to continue serving the Lord and doing the work He has called for me to do. I will continue as long as the Lord continues to press on my heart his will for my life, but if I’m being truthful losing my daughter caused my spirit to break. I’m not under the delusion that my brokenness is unamendable because I believe it can be mended and repaired in the Lord’s timing, not necessarily in my impatient timing. I’m so impatient right now because I want to break free from this emotional distress, yet it is through suffering that healing can finally begin.

My suffering has a name, it is called grief and although it makes me uncomfortable, I choose with my free will to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I also trust God is breaking my will in certain areas in order to strengthen my broken spirit , for a purpose down the road to help someone in my similar situation. I have never claimed serving the Lord was easy, nor living for Him didn’t hold challenges, because it does. Those challenges become testimonies of how I run my race here on Earth with endurance. Testimonies of suffering that turned to healing. Testimonies of what true faith looks like in the stare down of a unfamiliar path I must continue to walk, in order to finish the race before me. I can’t allow the weight of situations to hold me back from completing the race started years ago, I must remove anything that weighs me down or slows me down. For starters I choose not to feel sorry for myself or to play the victims card because those weigh a person down emotionally and hold their head down instead of upright.

I too am in cancer treatment at this time, just as I was caring for my child dying of cancer. I’m three months into treatment and each time I go to infusion I battle how unfair it is that there is hope for my recovery but my daughter who fought so hard without complaining lost her battle to cancer. I remind myself that her suffering led to the greatest healing of all. She’s in the arms of the great physician…She is truly living, to where her passing has me merely existing.

See, a conflict within is a battle between flesh and spirit. Our flesh battles our spirit constantly competing for first place. Right now my will is to stay strong and keep going. Keep encouraging the discouraged, be an example of hope and light to those struggling with despair and darkness. Yet, my spirit is crushed. My soul is in need of a friend and here my spirit screams, “rest in Jesus, He’s the best friend you can have.” I do rest in Jesus, that is where I find strength to carry on. Yes, I’m broken but repairable, lost but hold an established path set out specifically for me to walk on in faith. I have free will to give up at any moment but my spirit still holds a fight to continue and to use my remaining time to show others how to fight, when the battlefields of life seem unfair or when it is time to walk on unfamiliar territory…

You don’t have to lose a child to hold a conflict within. You who are reading can be battling heartache in different areas such as work, relationships, child rearing, health issues, home issues, finances, sickness etc.

When your flesh wants first place then you are thinking in a worldview which will only defeat you in the process. Meaning, if you belong to God but think like the world, then you respond as the world does. This world is lost and in need of hope. So if you think like the world does and act as the world acts, then what does that say about you as a person? It says you’re a follower not a leader. It says you are broken and seek help from a broken ,dying world. That’s not help, that’s called fitting in. We were intended to stand out as different. We are to be the salt of the Earth. This means we add flavor but also assist in the healing process of those around us through prayer and hope we offer.

Your spirit is constantly trying to discern what circumstances come at you that has you responding too. Your flesh is weak but your spirit deserves more credit than we tend to offer it. In order to let your spirit hold first place while competing against your flesh, you must align the desires of your heart under the desires God holds for you as his child. If you have accepted the Lord as your personal savior, then you belong to him. This life is not our own, it was intended to be used in a manner that Heaven’s population increased by the commitment to the Lord and the faith placed in the one who created us. Our main job was to mirror the Lord in each of our responses to life’s circumstances. Don’t allow yourself to merely exist. Life is for the living so we must remember to live life as today was our last day, because just as there is an appointed time to be born, there’s also an appointed time to die. Nothing can stop those appointments as they are divine appointments. ( Ecclesiastes 3:1-6)

Use your time wisely and purposely. Lock it down in your thinking that there are needs greater than your own, all around us. Find the need and then act accordingly. When you do, you will find your struggles weren’t as big as you thought they were. That’s because you took the focus off yourself in order to place it on someone else…

Blessings,

Robin Worgull