And the Floods Came In: Fighting for my Home

I had a completely different blog planned; it was to be a part two for my Women’s Woman blog, but then in came the flood.

Many of you may have heard about the flood in Colorado, well my husband and I were part of that. Luckily we weren't right in the middle of it the worst parts. We did several inches of water pouring into our apartment that we had to fight off. While doing this I had a bit of an allegory for this came to mind.

For you to understand this, let me start at the beginning….
It was Thursday morning and I was about to attempt to go to school, even though it was pouring outside. I had a Math quiz at 9:30 am and I didn't want to make it up later. So, I put a coat, put on shoes I didn't care about getting wet, placed a towel over my backpack and trudged out into the rain. Now, I don’t drive to school, I commute via bus and train and to get to my bus stop I need to cross a busy street. I came upon this street and it was gone. The street was a fast moving river of water- I could see the current rushing past. I debated whether to try and cross and get to school. That was when I had several scenarios run through my head of what could happen if I tried crossing and none of them were good. I went home and told my husband, “I don’t feel like crossing the Nile River today.”

In the end he stayed home as well and we spent the day mopping up the water pouring into the front of our apartment and using his boss’s shop vacuum. We were at work fighting off the oncoming waters from 8 am- 4 pm.

Towards the end of the day the water had stopped rising and we could rest a bit before getting back to work. Before that one of us was squeezing out towels that we had lined against the wall. The other would be using the shop vacuum mainly on the carpet. It was hard work, but we weren't about to let that water into our home.

In the middle of all this I felt like my husband and I were fighting for our home. Yes, were fight off the flood waters, but it kind of reminded me how the world likes to invade the home and ruin what you have created. Just as the water could have ruined our carpet, furniture and books if we hadn't been attentive and stopped it.

In that one day we had vacuumed up over 100 gallons of water, and that’s not even measuring the water we squeezed from our towels. But we were determined to keep this force at bay and keep our home safe.

Problems and trials and hard times sneak their way into our home, even when we do our best to keep our home and family safe. My husband and I love our apartment, as small and quirky it is- it’s our home and place of refuge.

When that flood came we were fighting for our home in almost the same way we fight the world out of our home. Sometimes it’s all we can do to keep the problem at bay and all hands on deck are need to not sink. Sometimes we can step back and take a breather, reinforce our strength before diving back in and fighting the problem off. But, if we don’t keep an eye on it, it can leak back into our home or even find a new place to enter.

When we thought we had it all under control we found water leaking in from the neighboring apartment that is currently vacant. Back to work we went.

We had neighbors, from the last flood, which had to move because the damage was too great; I didn’t want to end up like that. I felt if we had to move that our fighting would be in vain. We worked hard to not keep us safe, but our home safe.

I’ve seen it in the world where people gave up the fight for their home and let the world stream right in and they wonder why they can’t find any peace. Or they move, hoping to find peace again. They don’t fight because they are tired of fighting.

We were certainly tired from the fight and could barely keep up with fighting off the water when a friend came with more towels. We traded out our soaked things for fresh towels to do the work our towels couldn’t keep up with anymore.

“Ask and ye shall receive knock and it shall be open unto you,” that’s what it says in the scriptures. Help did not come until we asked. Reinforcements won’t know you need help until you call out for help. (But of course it’s good to ask when see a friend losing their fight.)

Safe Place

It’s been said to be peaceful and “…turn the other cheek…” as Christians, but what many people don’t know  is that God wants us to be warriors for we are in enemy’s territory when we are in the world.

            In Ephesians 6:11-17,

“Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.”

So, weeks ago we were discussing this scripture in a Sunday School for women in my church. We talked about this scripture, to use it as a tool to stand in holy places. We aren’t to just to idly stand by to let the hard world beat down on our different morals, but we are to find strength in the symbolic armor of God and stand in safe places.

            Well, in this Sunday School class I made a comment about how, my husband and I like to keep our home safe, so when we come home we can take off our armor and rest. After I made this comment the teacher declared, “No! Never take of the armor!”

            I tried to explain my thoughts by saying something along the lines of, “…of getting away to a place where we don’t have to fight all the time.”

Now, like many times before, the right words have come to me.

            Like in any war there is armor, we where something to protect our body. But like any armor it won’t hold up forever, it won’t protect us from hits always. Like in any war there are safety points, home bases where the soldiers can rest, heal from their wounds and repair their armor. Even in a child’s game of tag we create a “home base” to catch our breath.

            Now to recap about the symbolic armor of God there is…

-          Girt our loins with truth

-          Breastplate of righteousness

-          Shod our feet with preparation of the gospel of peace

-          Shield of faith

-          Helmet of salvation

-          Sword of the Spirit

Each piece of this armor and with its weapons is needed to protect us and fight off the attacks of the Adversary and those who fight for him. But in any battle with any soldier repairs are needed to protect our heart and stay standing strong. Even a sword needs sharpening.

Yet, fighting again and again gets tiring and our sword can get dull. So what can a person do to regain strength? Go to a safe place.

“In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of Refuge,” Proverbs 14:26

            In any war of any kind a safe place is needed, as I have said before. For me in this war against THE Enemy my safe place, my refuge, isn’t just church, but my home. My husband and I want to come home and take off our defenses, take time to repair our armor.

            How do we repair our armor? Well, for us personally there are a few things we do.

·         We spend time together, just us. We talk about our day, the good and even the bad stuff. We swap stories and even jokes. We’ve been known to exchange some of the corniest jokes (I will spare you on telling them to you).

·         We have our time that we call alone, but together time. We may be in the same room but we are doing different things. For an example as I am typing this my husband is studying the scriptures.

·         Studying the scriptures (both alone and together). This is to better understand what God wants to do and achieve. This strengthens our faith as well.

·         We love a clean home. Yes, it gets messy at times and we aren’t neat freaks either; but we feel a strong sense of peace when things are in order.

·         We serve each other. Strangely enough we’ve even fought over who gets to do the dishes. We both don’t like it and we know if we take the other person’s day of doing dishes we are serving that person.

·         One of the biggest things that keep our home a safe place is we limit how the world gets into our home. For us and our home, we choose not to have cable and internet. We are even rather particular with what kind of movies we let into our home. (We’ve both thrown out a few movies from our collection- and we are BIG movie fans).

 “But how do you live like that? So cut off from the world?” some of you may ask. It was hard at first, at least for me, I can’t speak for my husband. But I’ve gotten use to it. It’s better for me to keep the world away like that for I am rather addicted to television and surfing the internet.

            To close this out I want to end with story from my past. I was born into a good Christian home, but I didn’t have my own zeal to go until I was about 13 or 14. Since then I would get spiritually filled every Sunday at church, but by the time the next Sunday would come around I would be empty, I would be filling low. I often called myself, a cup with holes. It wasn’t until I was 21 that I realized what was missing. I would combat the world for six days without rest, combating it even in my home and then by Sunday my armor would be weaken and I would be exhausted. I wasn’t stepping back from the fight to my safe place, because I didn’t build one up outside of church.

            Even now I am stilling learning about building a safe place for me, my husband and always have for visitors and for our children in the future.

            I doubt anyone who isn’t religious will be reading this, but I could be wrong, I don’t mind being wrong. But those who don’t seek the same beliefs I do I am sure you too need a safe place to recover from the fight. The world is a hard place to live in and we can’t do it alone and we definitely can’t do it ALL the time.