Victorious Secret. Laura Mary Phelps
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can’t eat just one. Right? You must devour the entire bag.
And I’m not some sort of martyr here, if that is what this sounds like. Chip obsessed? Yes, absolutely. But not a martyr. Or a masochist. Honestly. I do not follow because I love to feel like every bit of my life and very self is under some sort of hideous attack. Nor do I get up and follow because I enjoy suffering to the point of death. I certainly do not declare myself a Christ-follower because Catholics are a bunch of insane people who thrive on personal torture — which, well, is sort of true — and I want to be a part of that club. Rather, I choose to follow daily because abiding in Jesus Christ is the only path that leads me to anywhere worth being, the only place I belong.
Trust me, I have a bookshelf of journals at home filled with the details of wrong paths taken, and they read like horror stories or depressing novels. The one thing they all have in common? They are all me, following my will. Little of God and what he might have planned for me. No turning to Jesus and asking him what I should do. Just me, on the battlefield, thinking I could figure it out all on my own.
Those journals don’t end well.
Really, it’s only by the grace of God that I was finally able to admit that I was in no position to write my own story, and that I needed God and his strength to guide me through this battlefield otherwise known as my life. When I decided to live a Christ-centered life, the cataracts began to clear from my self-centered eyes. I recognized that I am truly nothing — and I mean nothing — without him, and that apart from him, I cannot fight the everyday battle that I constantly find myself at the center of. That without him, I make some pretty stupid choices and either end up with a heart full of regret and shame, or with a precious loved one that I have injured, or (the worst-case scenario) completely out of chips and salsa. If I do not intentionally seek out relationship with my Father every single second of every single day, I may even fail to recognize that I’m in a battle or under attack. And oh, sweet friend, there is nothing more dangerous than standing on the front line, oblivious to the fight, armed with nothing.
So, back to Mary. Why does she matter? Well, think about it. She is God’s Mother. As a mother myself, I would say that no person living on earth knows any of my children better than I do. For nine months our hearts beat side by side, and to this day I swear I can still feel the weight of each of my babies’ hearts pressed upon mine. So what better, faster way to seek God, to know him, to grow closer to him, than by going to and through his mother? And maybe — and this is just a thought here — but maybe the suffering that boils up to the surface in these weeks of intentional prayer and consecration are actually necessary. Maybe God uses this time to strengthen me and to increase my trust in him. Maybe this is just the trial I need to practice the faithfulness that always precedes the blessing.
You cannot deny that suffering is a given, right? You cannot deny that battles will rage on, no matter who you are or where you live. And you cannot deny that no matter how hard we try to make this journey we are on free of any discomfort, and no matter what measures we take to remove anything remotely unpleasant or challenging, we will encounter suffering. So yes, we can agree that there is suffering, and we can agree that there is a battle, but how we choose to fight is up to us individually.
If I believe in God (which I do), and if I believe that my life has purpose (which it does), and if I trust that God wastes nothing (which he does not), then my suffering must have purpose, too. We cannot avoid pain in our lives, but we can choose how to steward that pain. This is why I turn to Mary. To learn from her. To learn how to respond to unspeakable pain out of love, rather than fear. To learn from her how to stand courageously at the foot of the cross, rather than curled up in the fetal position underneath the dining room table, which I may or may not have actually done … this week. To learn from her how to be a real super woman: a woman of power and grace, wisdom and wonder. The choice is ours.
So, with a large tub of popcorn — and by the way, my apologies to the concessions girl for suggesting they re-name their size descriptions, because I realize now that she probably has very little pull in the AMC marketing decision process. But honestly, what woman feels good about ordering and eating a tub of anything? Maybe a tub of kale. But that’s not part of the $90 combo deal I ordered. I suggested they call it a grande popcorn. Like Starbucks. Sounds so much better, right? She thought I was crazy.
So, anyway, there I sat with my son, with our grande popcorn and sugar-free soda, next to the nest of anxiety and unexplainable fear lodged deep within my heart, praying that this movie would be just the distraction I needed, and that it would supply me with an abundance of comfort and send me home in peace. Yes. I wanted the miracle. I wanted the easy fix. I wanted to sit and be entertained and leave feeling all better.
Well, it didn’t. And I didn’t.
Send me home in peace, that is.
Fix me fast and easy.
But it did do something else. Something quite unexpected.
Wonder Woman awakened in me the desire to fight harder for that peace. She encouraged me to persevere. To endure. To be stronger. To be braver. To be a loud voice.
To be motivated by compassion. To show mercy. And to do absolutely everything out of love. (The movie also inspired me to lose weight, grow my hair out, and get lip injections, because good grief, two hours of staring at Gal Gadot on the screen is not easy for those who battle with their self-image. But that’s another chapter.)
Self-loathing aside, this movie knocked hard on the door of my heart and broke me open, unleashing tears that seemed to have been building up for weeks but had nowhere to go. Of course, if you ask my children, they will roll their eyes and tell you that I cry at everything. And, well, it is true. I am totally a crier. I cry at commercials. I cry listening to music. I cried when I saw Chip and Joanna Gaines’ merchandise at Target. I always cry when I have to make dinner (and so does my family). I even cried (and when I say cried, I mean sobbed uncontrollably) at the movie Marmaduke, which I will admit is super pathetic because Marmaduke is a fictional dog, and the plot line was quite possibly the lamest ever, and well, did you go to see Marmaduke? No? Exactly. So, yeah. I cry.
But the tears this time were valid, because they confirmed a truth I know, but had forgotten, because of that whisper that does not leave me alone. EVER. The tears were born out of the hard reality that the nest of anxiety I brought to the theater was not the problem. The fear lodged deep inside of me leaving me paralyzed was not actually the issue. The tears washed me of the lies about who I am and what I’m about and led me away from the anxiety and the fear and back to its very source, back to the rulers of the present darkness and the one behind the evil schemes, back to the one I was facing in battle: the devil.
Yes. I said it. The devil. And in the very first chapter, too. I’m bold like that. Because we hate to talk about him, don’t we? Well, let’s get over that. Because this book is about battles, and a battle always has an enemy, and ours is the devil. Do not be fooled into thinking the enemy is your annoying coworker, or your opinionated mother-in-law, or those extra fifteen pounds you can’t seem to lose, or your difficult child, or your disappointing bank account, or that perfect friend’s always perfect status on Facebook, or your disengaged spouse. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). Evil is real and so is the devil, and he, the father of lies, is the one Jesus said comes to “steal and kill and destroy” (Jn 10:10). He is the enemy that we are up against. And the sooner we accept that, the better prepared we are to fight, and not just fight — but win. Because that’s the goal here, right? To be victorious.
I think we all know we are in an everyday battle. I am not revealing some earth-shattering, breaking news. But I am not convinced we fully comprehend how powerful this battle is, and the ruin it can leave us in. And I am certain that too many of us are marching into war completely unprepared because we tend to be so self-focused that we fail to remember everyone else is in a battle, too. Everyone we love, everyone we know, everyone we disagree with on Twitter, everyone we will never meet this side of heaven. And I can’t help but wonder if maybe