The Good Fight

By Linda W. Yezak

Have you ever wondered just how much you can handle? How much stress, anxiety, fear?

How many times you can bite your tongue, holding back responses to hurtful comments because those making them are themselves in pain? Have you been tested? Shown your limits? Humbled into realizing that there is very little you can do if you have to rely on your own strength?

We all have at one time or another. We skirmish against our own fleshly desires. We war against principalities and powers who don’t fight fair. We are dropped into seemingly impossible situations just because impossible situations happen. God promises to be with us during all these battles. And He is.

My most recent test began in 2019, but intensified in 2022, when my husband and my elderly mother had cancer at the same time. I served as sole caregiver for both—a seemingly impossible situation.

So much of that awful year is a blur. I remember the time Mama called and all she could say was, “Help me.” And the time Billy passed out in the bathroom and collapsed against the shower door. Then there was the time he’d been sent to the hospital for dehydration, and when he finally got a room, Mom called. She’d fallen.

Then there was another time, while Mom was with hospice care and Billy had been declared

healed.

He’d been cured, but he wouldn’t eat. Even when the surgical incision had mended and the

effects from chemo were receding, he still wouldn’t eat anything substantial. Yet he tried to

resume his normal life, normal activities, with nothing more than an Ensure in his system to give him the strength to do it. The number of times he fell from sheer weakness rivaled the number of times Mom did.

One day, he had an appointment with his primary care physician, who’d apparently been left out of the medical loop during Billy’s cancer treatment and surgery. The doctor took one look at my skeletal husband and asked if he wanted to go with hospice. Judging by Billy’s seeming lack of desire to get well, I honestly didn’t know whether he’d choose it, despite being declared healed.

That was the day I broke. Despite the fact that God had provided everything necessary to engage in this battle—people at the time of need, knowledge in the most amazing ways, personal guidance through it all—I just couldn’t fight anymore.

Sometimes, like Elijah in 1 Kings 19:7, we break. We reach the end of what we can do even with our loving Father’s help. When it happened to Elijah, God provided rest. For me, God used my friends from all over the nation to comfort me. They’d call or write to encourage me. Two or three times a day for a week, someone I hadn’t heard from in ages would call and listen while I poured my heart out. Soon, I was ready for battle again.

I had broken, but He healed me quickly so I could continue to fight until Mom went Home the following year.

Whatever battle you’re engaged in, remember He is with you, a tear drop away. Cling with both hands to His promise in Isaiah 41:13. “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” Watch for Him. Listen for His voice. He’s there. Then, when all is done, you can say with Paul, “I have fought the good fight.”

About the Author

Author of the award-winning Christian fiction, Linda W. Yezak is also a free-lance editor. When her one-and-only retired, they moved back to their hometown in the Brazos Valley where they are happily and wonderfully swamped with kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids. Learn more about Linda on her website, and follow her on Facebook, Instagram, BookBub, and Goodreads.