“Winning By Not Fighting.” Fiction. Based on a True Agitation.

“Keep becoming, the Voice reminds her.
A gate that divided the sick from the healthy
Allowed messages of redemption and freedom from earthly shackles.
The Spirit speaks now of that same healing
To keep becoming.” 

—K.E.A

“Winning by Not Fighting.”

Fiction. Based on a True Agitation.

By Leanna Glenn Markham

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Trigger Warning: our program often motivates people to discuss their trauma. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, please, take a step back to address emotional flashbacks and trauma before continuing to push yourself. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or the National Suicide Hotline at (1-800) 273-8255.

For once, I held my tongue
As two other tongues threw volleys
Back and forth
Intense like cannon-shot
Then lighter, like deadly bullet spray.

I cannot fix this.
I hear two people trying to fix
Each other…or at least make the other
Like himself.
Or to dig out a truth
that underlies action,
a truth unknown to both.

It never works.
Not even when I, in my great wisdom,
attempt the same–
to fix or dig on earth not my own.
This is why I clamp down my jaws right now.
Someone says my name,
Trying to lure me into the battleground.

I don’t take the bait.
In the midst of wishing away the noise,
I hear the word, “Bless.”
Bless?

Yes.

So I begin to bless them,
to invite the Presence to go in,
to intervene.
To shed light.

I am too fragile a messenger
to shed the light myself.
Too easily tempted to let fly
words that will flay the soul
rather than heal.
Within a minute of the blessing
the voices calm.
The battle stops – at least for the moment.

At the same time
the Presence opens a window
into my own frustration,
My agitation.
Arguments I didn’t comprehend,
Anger that made no sense
widening in circles around me,
made me tremble as a child,
if only inwardly.
Day after day,
Year after year.
Why were people like this?

Fast-forward decades—
Why am I like this?
Still?
I don’t want to be.

And the Presence
touches my shoulder.
A gentle touch.
“You don’t have to be.
In fact, just now, when you
didn’t speak but inwardly
blessed, you became more
your true self
and less of the other that you
so dislike.”

His touch and voice grants
Peace,
a calming of those
heated ripples,
as if He’s set His hand on
their very source
and stilled them.

I may slip and not
hold my tongue next time.
But now I know I can.
I can resist the lure
of a battle not my own
and one which
no one wins.

Will I fully master that in this life?
I don’t know.
But I’ve had a golden glimpse
of the power of blessing.