What a month! It had been laden with stress, critical decisions, work challenges, migraines, and an overbooked calendar. It seemed as if every day I was being tested. Each day seemed to bring a new challenge. I don’t know if some of my co-workers even realize how close they came to a good, old-fashioned, verbal…never mind.  Here’s the thing. Each time that I felt my emotions heading off the charts, I also felt the presence of God’s spiritual guardrails around me to remind me who I was and whose I was. As Christians, we’ve all been there.

It is typically during these times that I become intentional about creating and including activities and quiet time to restore balance and joy. Oftentimes, this includes a combination of focused prayer, time with family and friends, travel, Disney, and gardening. 

I had managed to make time for all of these things, except gardening. A series of very early work meetings over the last two weeks canceled my routine of tending to my garden in the mornings before work. Additionally, hurricane season and after-work commitments made me opt to postpone picking the last of the summer’s harvest and preparations for fall planting to the weekends, which proved to be equally busy in recent weeks.

One thing that I was most looking forward to was harvesting my mangos. Even during the rainy days, I would peek through the porch behind another overgrown tree to count down the days until I could get them. They were in their final stage. This particular tree produces the sweetest, largest mangos I have ever had in the United States. They might even rival some that I have enjoyed in the Caribbean. 

When the tropics calmed and gave us a nice, dry afternoon, I had my mouth and shears set on bringing these beauties in to enjoy, share, and freeze, only to realize that someone had beat me to it! My tree was cleared. What a violation! This is the 2nd time this has happened. I would have gladly taken the culprit(s) to the grocery store to get whatever they needed if this was done out of need. To take every piece of fruit was just plain rude and mean. 

In that instant, all the devotionals, scriptures, and prayers I had absorbed seemed to be exiting my mind as fast as the thief who violated my fenced-in, video camera covered yard had left with my mangos. Over the last few weeks, I had done all I felt I could in the face of the other spiritual testing to maintain my faith and composure. This felt like the tiny, yet ultimate straw.  I thought, “This means war!”  I envisioned myself grabbing my machete (just to scare them, of course) and waiting for them to return. I also considered adding barbed wire under the bamboo border behind those trees. 

None of that made sense. I was choosing the wrong weapons to fight the real war.

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” - 2 Corinthians 10:3-4

This was not about mangos. This was not about rude corporate behaviors. This was not about physical pain. This was not about earthly relationships. This was about warfare, recognizing it and responding correctly to it. It was about choosing the right weapons for the real fight.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” – Ephesians 6:12

In that moment I chose to not let what I immediately felt turn me into someone I was not. I would not be robbed of enjoying the joy all around me by tactics aimed to skew my perception of my happiness, to only these events that were meant to rob me of my joy and focus. What can a machete do that the promise of God cannot? 

“But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.”
- 2 Thessalonians 3:3

To rely on a worldly weapon to fight a spiritual war that is already won is useless. I chuckled at the thought and called a few friends to laugh about it and share how God steered me away from ridiculous thoughts, to what He said in His word. It all seemed smaller. Even my brother reminded me, “It’s just fruit.” 

My peace was salvaged. I was thankful that God had allowed me to know the better choice of weaponry to seek. God further showed me how choosing the right weapons helps us look beyond the immediate battle in which we might be consumed, to the bigger war that He is leading, where we have like-minded people fighting along with us. 

I had shared a post about what had happened in my neighborhood app where people share activities across nearby subdivisions. The first response I got was from a lady in a nearby subdivision, who expressed empathy for what happened and asked if she could share a bag of her starfruit from her trees to hopefully make up for what someone had done. I thanked her for her kind gesture and told her to enjoy her harvest and that I was grateful for the offer. The second respondent began another series of comments which has led the three of us, as fellow growers, meeting next week in the neighborhood to share fruit and cuttings.

The evil one is constantly trying to disarm us and will repeatedly try to catch us off guard. He does not want us to enjoy the blessings and good that surrounds us, nor to maintain our connection to our Father and His Word. We are already victorious. We do not need to choose tempers, verbal lashes, machetes, nor heavy hearts and minds. We have much more powerful weapons at our disposal. Choose wisely.

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