fight my battles

There is a song I cannot stop listening to that has all of the elements that would make me not like it. The song has only 1 line in the verse sung over and over. The chorus only has 2 lines sung over and over. The song repeats while the band builds and builds, then drops off, and builds again. In addition to all of that, it is recorded by Michael W. Smith, who I have not been a fan of for most – ok all – of my life, and to be fair the first time I heard the song was on YouTube when Bethel Music performed it. All that being said, he has put out a song that I just cannot get enough of. I play it almost every morning on my way to work and it makes me tear up just about every time.

So what is the name of the song?

“Surrounded (Fight my battles)”

So what is it about this song that continues to speak to me? It is the chorus. It is so simple but makes so much sense. It hits on the thoughts that go through our heads when we feel we are in the midst of a battle. The chorus of the song goes like this:

“It may look like I’m surrounded, but I’m surrounded by you.”

Have you ever felt like this? I know I sure have. If you have ever challenged the status quo, you will certainly feel like this. If you have ever challenged the way yourself and all of your friends grew up, you will certainly feel like this. And sometimes when you are fighting battles within yourself, you will feel like this. If you have ever said, “Why do I keep doing this?” you may feel like this.

Lately, I have been challenging the status quo within myself as well as within the institutions I have been a part of my entire life. As I have dug deeper into God’s word and studied more and more about what God is trying to say to us, it has led me to challenge the status quo of one of the largest institutions in the world today: the church. I have found myself questioning some of the things I have been told my entire life. I have found myself saying things like “I don’t know about that” more and more often. I have found myself getting in the middle of uncomfortable conversations that may or may not end poorly. But when all of this happens, the chorus of this song runs through my head.

“It may look like I’m surrounded, but I’m surrounded by you.”

There is one thing that has become very apparent through all of this: it is extremely important to approach any conversation (or battle) humbly. It is important to remember how messy your journey of faith has been throughout the years. As soon as you forget how long it has taken you to evolve to this point in your life, you begin to hinder the evolution of the people you are talking to. It’s easy to forget how many times you’ve taken 5 steps backwards after taking 1 or 2 steps forward. Life is messy, and we are all in this together. Just remember that if you feel surrounded, that you are surrounded by our Creator. He is behind you and is rooting for you. Approach things with love and you will not lose.

-brad

a hard time listening

I have a hard time listening…. Well let me clarify, I have a hard time actually listening.  As I have tried to be introspective about who I am as a person, one thing has become despairingly clear.  I have a hard time just listening to people without formulating something I want to say in return.  I catch myself all the time almost interrupting someone to get my point across. As much as it pains me to admit it, this is definitely true in my conversations with my wife. I absolutely love talking to her. She is 100 times a better person than me, and I love to hear her opinion. However, I catch myself wanting to throw in something into the conversation a lot, and I miss her point sometimes because of it.

Want to know if you do it too? Do you ever catch yourself saying something like “well…” right in the middle of someone’s sentence? I also find myself doing some type of gesture with my index finger as if to say, “Hey sir or madam, I have an important point to throw in here!”

So what is the point of me confessing this? We are seven episodes in to the podcast at this point, and the beautiful thing is that it has spurned some really cool conversations around my office and with my friends. I have found that people are willing to open up to me more now that they know I am willing to open up (as heard on the second episode and others). I LOVE THIS. I love the conversation even if they disagree with me or with the podcast as a whole. The problem is that it exposes my propensity to want to interject.

Theology and philosophy are not my strong suits. To be honest, some of the conversations we have had on the podcast have gone over my head. There are long periods of time where I won’t speak on an episode somewhat because I am listening, but also sometimes because I have nothing to contribute. I yearn for the day when I do this in everyday conversations. I long to be a good listener.

So here is my call to action (do you like my spiritual speak there?).  Starting right now, I am going to make this my goal in every conversation I engage in: I will wait to hear someone out 100% before I decide if I need to speak or if it’s time for me to say nothing. I want to make it a habit to pause before I speak in order to be more thoughtful in my responses and to give the other person a chance to finish their thought.  In other words, I want to let God show me where he wants the conversation to go. I want to give the other person a chance to let me know if they want a response or just want me to listen. Maybe in this way I can serve them better.

about the author:

Brad Stair is a founder and the workhorse behind the Everything is OK podcast.  He lives in Oklahoma City with his wife Megan.  

shut up and dance with me

I've never been a very good follower. David (the hubs) discovered this early in our relationship at the first wedding we attended together as a couple. He was a little flustered at my inability to follow his movements, and I responded with a "well I can't read your mind!" Our dancing has gotten better, though I still try conspicuously hard to imitate his movements so he doesn't notice my resistance.

I blame it mostly on my childhood, as we all tend to do with perceived faults. I am one of six kids, five of whom are girls, and I sit at spot #5. By the time I was really any fun to hang out with, my brother (the oldest) already had a job and I don't believe it was too long after he turned 18 that he was off to his own apartment, working brilliantly at a small computer business where his adept technical skills were first put to good use.

So the five of us girls spent a lot of time together and inevitably there were many at-home dance parties that ensued. Being short on men as we were, the teenage lot of us partnered up as we wished and alternated taking the lead, though I seem to remember doing it quite often. A few years later I attended some informal dance lessons to prepare for a high school formal (yep, homeschooled) and tried to undo all the leading I had done with my sisters for years.

This whole not-following-well tendency has sprouted up in things other than my dance moves, as I find myself all too often questioning where I am in life, whether I'm doing the absolute best thing, wondering what magical gifts I am destined to share with the world and deeply underestimating God's ability to place me where I need to be.

My sophomore year of college I grew tired of the freshman 15 I had gained and decided to torture myself by running. I actually grew to rather enjoy it, despite the belly cramps and lack of scenery on the long, flat Illinois road surrounded by cornfields that christened my running. Running served its purpose very well, but I certainly am not built for it, as my hips are wider than any other part of me and are therefore not particularly aerodynamic.

I've continued this type of exercise suffering off and on since then and in the last couple years have found that God often speaks to me when I'm running, many times through the music I listen to. And no, my Pandora station is not always on the "Waterdeep Worship Radio."

Tonight a song came on that He has used before and it pulled at my heart the same way it has at different times in the last year or so. You may not think Walk the Moon's "Shut Up and Dance" would be a likely vessel of God's voice, but it has been for me several times and it was again tonight.

Now, knowing what God knows about me, his voice in this song is usually the girl's. "Oh don't you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me," she says. And the artist responds to her, "you're holding back." How often I feel this way toward God. You are holding out on me. It's not that You're not good, or mighty or loving - but You are holding out on me. There's something You're keeping from me, not showing me, not giving me - something you won't let me have. Maybe I'm not good enough, or I haven't learned enough, or I'm not as malleable as I should be, but you're holding out.

But to that the girl responds "shut up and dance with me." As someone who gets really distracted with the future I tend to focus on the hows and the whens and the whats next, and sometimes I feel like God says to me, "Hannah, just shut up, and dance with me." Quit being so distrustful, quit your mind games, and just dance right here, with me, right now, as you are and as I Am.

Alongside the obvious pain of dragging myself through a run along the streets and sidewalks of downtown, apart from skydiving running is the closest I get to feeling like I can fly. When your breath, your chest, your legs get heavy but you find you have strength to go farther - that is flying. When your side cramps and the hill approaches and you breathe your way through it - that is flying. And in the middle of this activity, He chooses to speak? When I'm cursing my hips and glancing down at the slight belly pudge refusing to lie flush with my running shorts - this is when he sidles up next to me and says "dance with me?"

In the strength-sucking movement of running, when I am most fully aware of how much I am weak and pathetic, he asks me to stay in that motion. "Will you keep running? Not just now, but tonight, tomorrow morning, during work? Will you do this something with me so I can do this something in you? Will you stay in the lowlands where you can hear my voice instead of scaling the mountain alone? Will you stay next to Me. Will you give up this (plan, dream, passion, desire) to just be next to Me." And it may not be forever that we lay it down, but many times it's a lot longer than we would like. Relationships require love and sacrifice from both people. 

Yet He knows me. He beckons me, invites me. He is that crazy, wily redhead on the dance floor that you can't help but come back to. "I'm here. I hear you. But shut up and dance with me."

He asks us to dance. Will we tango?

about the author

Hannah Joy Meigs loves writing, yoga, traveling and adventure. She is the chief editor of the Everthing is OK blog, and specializes in making words play together.