Between Battlefields

Right now I am sitting in my dorm room, trying to complete some homework so I won’t have to take it home with me for the weekend.  It will be the second time since Christmas break that I will have left campus and returned to Mind Over Manor. Number two out of the five expected times I will be home during the semester, not counting Easter weekend and Spring Break. My best friend and honorary brother was able to follow one of his dreams and join the Chapel Choir for our college this semester. This has limited his weekends off to five, and most likely mine as well as he is the main person I trust from our home area to car-pool with.

Not that I mind staying on campus during the weekends. It is easier to get my homework done without the urge to spend time with the family I don’t see during the week or play with the cat on my bed. I can workshop with classmates, have girly nerdy movie nights with my roommate, get caught up on laundry, and  listen and watch the joy on my brother’s face as he sings in the choir every Sunday. This past weekend I watched movies on Hulu, and managed to defy the darkness that had threatened to swallow me on the same date of the previous year. But sometimes it is not enough.

I desperately need this weekend off. The past weeks have been a struggle, emotionally. More and more I’ve been fighting the urge to cry as soon as I wake up. I quit going to the writing club that was my favorite part of the week up until now. I haven’t been able to make myself write. This week in particular, I had to drag myself to the student worship service. A normally enjoyable activity that I have loved since I first came to college. But it has been too much; being around people was too much. I need to curl up on a love seat with our elderly marmalade cat and a book that is not related to class in any way shape or form. I need that quiet peace that can only be found in the middle of the woods, and hear birds outside my window instead of blow dryers down the hall. I need to be a child again, to re-connect with Abba and be free from all these problems that the adult world has pushed me into. And in an hour or so I will have that break.

One hour till I am on the road with my brother. I’ve never told him this, but those car rides are my favorite part of going home. Just the sight of his black Infinity is enough to make the tension, the stress start to ease off. Some of my favorite memories are in that car on the road back to Mind Over Manor. In some ways, I think I enjoy more out of the ride home that being home (don’t get me wrong, I love my family dearly).  In the summer we race down those majestic hills with the sun pouring down on us, wind tearing through the open windows while we sing “Good to Be Alive” by Skillet. Not that we could hear each other, not with the loud music and the wind. Often we had to turn down or pause the song and roll up the windows a bit before we could talk. In the fall we would take the same road, now filled with red and gold tree tops and, on occasion, thick mist while listening to TFK (Thousand Foot Krutch) or even the soundtrack to The Walking Dead. At one point we had to slow down to a crawl because the fog was so thick we couldn’t make out other cars, let alone our exit. I think we spent ten minutes convinced we had missed it in the low clouds before the sign popped up in front of us. When we left for Christmas break this past year, the trees were dead and the sky was overcast. We drove through the tall winding hills listening to “I See Fire” by Ed Sheeran.  I leaned my head against the now closed window and let the words sooth over me while my brother sang along. I’ve heard some people say it is an ant-Christian song, but not for me. Tolkien loved Norse mythology and culture, and used a lot of it in Middle Earth. “I See Fire” reflects those Nordic beliefs, at least to me. Those people knew that the world around them was fallen and dying. They knew that they too would leave this existence, but they did not hide. They mourned and despaired the destruction of their world, but they did not run from it. They ran to meet it and died fighting. To quote Secondhand Lions, “they went out with their boots on.” 

As Christians, we know this world is fallen and that we are promised hardship and pain. But we are called to fight on anyway. I may see fire, I may feel darkness and death, but that puts me in the best position to put out the flames, light a candle and give life. How are you going to stop the fire if you can’t see it? That day in my brother’s black Infinity, I found the strength to fight on. Yes, I was tired and ready to cry in front of my best friend because the weight of everything was too much. I was so weak from the semester that I didn’t think I could stand if I had been asked to. But that cloudy car ride gave me strength to go on, it reminded me what I was fight for. “That there is some good in this world…and it’s worth fighting for” as Sam reminded me shortly after that during my family’s Annual Lord of the Rings Marathon.

  

Sometimes I stop and listen to “I See Fire” between classes. Just to remind myself that just because I see fire, I am not doomed to burn and that I can stop those flames from consuming others. It is a nudge that keeps me going at times. Whether my brother and I listen to it today on the way home, or if we decide to go with Thousand Foot Krutch, at least I am going home. Granted, home is just as much a battlefield as campus is. It has a different set of tactics that we will have to re-acquaint ourselves with and no doubt I will be eager for the ride back to campus by the time Sunday afternoon comes. But sometimes a change of pace can be good and being moved to a different battlefield can give us a break from the first. However, it is the journey between the battlefields in a black Infinity that gives me space to change my mind and spiritual weapons from college to Mind Over Manor mode. It is there that (for now at least) I can find the time to sit and simply be in Abba’s arms.