As a sophomore in high school, a friend once told me I had not landed the role I so desperately wanted in the school play. But my mom refused to believe it. She had seen my work, heard the lines, and even witnessed a miraculous answer to prayer when I could not eke out a New Yorker accent for days. After asking God for help, I woke up speaking with a voice that would make Barbra Streisand proud. Mom just knew I had the part. So, she drove us to the school to look at the list ourselves.
She was right. I had been cast as Adelaide, and as mom squealed in victory, she picked me up and swung me around the parking lot. While I was filled with joy at the prospect of singing and acting my heart out, I was more blessed to have a mother who would not take “no” for an answer. I saw what knowing really looked like. Faith that will not take “no” for an answer and will spend precious time and fuel to chase down a “yes.”
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That interaction planted something deep in me. Though it was only a high school play, it became the arena where I learned to hang on to goodness and mercy. And blessing. I don’t profess to understand all the detail and nuance in the story of Jacob wrestling with God. But that story mirrors my own story of learning to fight for my blessings.
Years ago, I knew a young military mom who struggled through her son’s diagnosis of severe epilepsy. She said, “I told God I won’t go through this unless there is blessing on the other side.” At the time I was, frankly, puzzled by what sounded like a defiant attitude toward God. But I knew she was locked into a battle I could not comprehend or judge.
After several more years of life, I understood more clearly.
“Blessing” does not always look like running slow motion with Jesus through a sunlit field of golden grass. Sometimes it looks remarkably like a man, hip broken, clothes torn, slogging his way through a raging river. But he bears a new name, because he held on “all night.”
As Reb Tevye prays from his ramshackle barn in The Fiddler on the Roof, “I know, I know. We are your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t you choose someone else?”
At the end of the movie, as he is driven from his homeland, separated from his three daughters, and pulling his cart with his own strength, a fiddler pulls his bow across a few strings. Tevye smiles, motions for the musician to follow him, and takes deliberate steps toward a new life. He knows he is loved, and his circumstances don’t change that fact. He can still hear the music.
Remaining determined and gritty, we will be blessed through pain that may bring some injuries. But the agility gained brings more lasting value than mere freedom of movement. We can find blessing in the battle. And sometimes that’s the only place we can find it.
Some things are worth fighting for.
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