Battle Fatigue

A long term war is different than a short one. Short battles are episodes of rallying, crises, and extraordinary moments where people rise to the occasion. It is easy to respond to an emergency when there are only a few.

A long term series of battles changes the scope of responses, and changes the person. What begins as something taking extraordinary effort becomes a wearying grind, where no resources remain to rise to the occasion. A constant state of crisis soon becomes a way of life, the highs and lows blending into a long and blurred train of apathetic responses. A crisis is no longer an urgent thing. The person feels that all resources to cope are gone, and each new crisis simply overwhelms to the point of inaction. There is not enough left to appropriately respond, no matter how responsible they feel to respond.

Dark circles appear under the eyes of the soul, and brightness of mind dulls with fatigue. The outlook on life is colored with the vision of war. A heavy weariness settles in, along with the feeling that it can never be removed. That this war will continue, and no battle is winnable. It batters the heart, and sucks life from the living, even while they go through the motions of trying to continue to fight.

Some simply give up. They refuse to rise one day, and refuse to go to do battle one more time – a kind of shock sets in which renders them completely unable to function. Others struggle on, mechanically responding to the demands of the day, unable to do more than is absolutely required, devoid of the joy and innocence they remember dimly, but cannot quite believe in anymore. Somehow, they remember there was once a different reality. But they can’t quite remember what the essence of it was, the present so overshadows it.

The thing about war, is that the individual soldier usually has very little control over the course of the battles. They find themselves in the middle of a war they did not ask for, fighting battles they could not defer or influence in any way. Caught in the grip of something bigger than life, and powerless to control the force that moves it.

The military calls this state “Battle Fatigue”. It can happen in situations other than a protracted war. Sometimes life is a battle outside of the war zones. For new or lifelong followers of Christ, it really IS a war. A war with Satan, whose desire is to crush us utterly. These times WILL come. And they will last long past the point where we feel that we have reached our limits.

Jesus Christ really has felt our pain, discouragement, and frustration. He truly does understand what it is like to be faced with problems that are bigger than we are. He, too, cried out for deliverance, when the job was bigger than He thought it would be. His example of submitting, even though He wished He did not have to, shows us the pattern for what is expected when we face things bigger than our ability to cope.

There is no way to make it easy. But we can reach a point where we can turn these problems over to the Lord. It does not mean they’ll be solved in a way we want them to be solved. But it does mean we can free the time and energy that we spend on worrying, and focus it on things that are more productive – attending to our families, meeting the day to day demands that are achievable, and wisely using the resources we do have even if they are not enough.

Peace is possible even in the middle of chaos. Solutions to the problems may not always come as we hope. But we will survive in spite of it, and come out stronger. The Lord is forging us into the people whom He wishes us to be. The process is often painful, nigh unto being unendurable. But we CAN endure, we can remain obedient, and we can come through with increased strength and spiritual power.

The prize is worth winning. The fight is worth fighting. It is worth getting up, one more time, to face what we feel completely inadequate to cope with. As we do, we’ll begin to gain something precious, and “angels cannot be restrained from being (our) companion(s)”.