Intentional Battles

Photo Courtsey of Makole Photography



When I started my year with the word Intentional I do not think I anticipated the crazy turns it would take! In January, I knew my life needed focus and thought that this would be the way God used the word for me.


Fast forward to this the last week of July and I am discovering that Intentional goes so much deeper than I thought!
Being Intentional is not just about planning your day down to the last second.
It is not just about how you spend your money or how much time you spend watching TV.


Intentional means being aware.
Intentional means choosing wisely.
Intentional means recognizing your resources are limited.
Intentional means saying no to good things for the best things.
Intentional also means being willing to make really hard choices.
In this season of life being Intentional means examining what battles are worth fighting.


One of my favorite scenes from Lord of the Rings is Sam's speech to Frodo.


Sam: It's like in the great stories Mr Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end its only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something ever if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They keep going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.


Have you ever thought about all of the battles we fight?
We live in a broken world and it is inevitable that we will fight.
We fight with our friends, siblings, parents, children.
We fight with our spouses.
We fight addictions and depression.
We fight insecurities and jealousy.


But do we ever ask ourselves what is worth fighting for?


That is the lesson I have been learning about being Intentional.
Every battle we fight takes something out of us.
It takes resources both physical and emotional.
It takes attention away from other things.


So when you begin to intentionally fight battles you start to intentionally invest energy.
That is life changing!


An interesting exercise both my husband and I did recently is a values sheet.
We sat down and as individuals wrote out our values.
The blog Minimal Wellness has a great sheet to use for this.
You can check the post that helped us and get your own values sheet here.


Knowing our values is helping me personally, but also us as a couple start to streamline how we choose our battles.


When you value something then it becomes something worth fighting for.

What do you value?

Relationships & Lord of the Rings

My life as of late seems haunted by the topic of relationships, so I've come to the conclusion God's trying to make a point.  From random conversations at Starbucks to Bible study topics it's this repeating theme in my life right now.  Along with that I seem to have developed an obsession with Lord of the Rings right now.  I find myself sticking the DVD in for background noise while working around the house and inevitably find myself picking up a section that stands out to me.  Strangely enough for some reason the character of Gollum stands out to me right now.  He's a character I can't get away from.  I think in some way it's because much like Frodo, I relate to him.  I see a piece of myself in his struggles.  I think on previous viewings I saw him as a villain.  The last few times around I've started seeing him as myself.

There's a Gollum in all of us.  He's really just our everyday inner struggles brought to the outside in their purest, most socially unacceptable form.  I think the scene in The Two Towers in which Frodo is trying to understand Gollum as an individual really struck me this time.  "You were not so very different from a Hobbit once, were you?" is the part that especially stood out to me.  In that one statement Frodo connects with this social outcast, not only that he gives him his name and identity back.  A name and identity that had been lost by the choices he had made.  Frodo makes a connection to that part of this creature that everyone else had given up on.  Frodo gives him a chance to be redeemed by seeing him as more than he appeared.  Of course in the end Gollum chooses a path that leads to his destruction, but even that has significance to me.  Because of a little Hobbit, who was willing to see past the surface to the person that once was underneath he was given a chance.

This made me think what would happen if my struggles took a toll that was as apparent as Gollum's?  Would a Frodo come along and give me a chance to regain who and what I once was?  Would someone show me how I could be redeemed?  Which leads me to the question of what do I do?  Do I see past the Gollum in others to the Smeagol that lies beneath?  Do I focus on our differences or do I see our similarities and use those to build a relationship? 

I believe that God sends people into our lives for a purpose.  If we focus on those similarities our relationships become stronger by the support we share from our varied experience in life.  If we focus on the differences they will inevitably divide us and we become like Gollum living our lives in a distant cave cut off from those who can help with our struggles.  By focusing on those similarities we can find ourselves with a companion like Sam, who when the struggle became so great for Frodo said, "I can't carry it for you... but I can carry you!"