Just Words; Redefining Defeat

There isn’t adequate enough, in the English language, a word describing the way I’m currently feeling. As if… someone meant for it to be that way. The best I know how to convey the calm chaos of emotions (I am very much aware of the blatant contradiction) I'm experiencing is with the word defeated.

I wish that in my dictionary of life, the example sentence would look something like this:
She refused to admit defeat and appealed.

Unfortunately I very much recognize the reality of it as:
She felt defeat like she felt tears; as much in her heart as it was in her eyes.

Defeat. Outside the advantage of personal release, there isn’t a reason to share the details behind its existence in my current life’s vocabulary. However, recognizing the potential, arguably inherent, "greater good" it could serve in my future, holds valuable insight.

Yes. I feel defeat slowly consume me like a plume of smoke.

But even in its midst I am aware of the degree of temporariness it holds. Giving up is what penetrates that limitation and extends it to permanence. And giving up is not something I’m accustomed to.

Yes, there is suffering in life. There are defeats. And no one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles to define your character than to be defeated without ever knowing who you’re fighting to become. I'm starting to realize that maybe, alternatively to the neglect I feel from my Father in Heaven I am really being loved beyond my capacity to understand. Maybe He has something planned for my life that I hadn't intended for myself. Something dripping with magnanimity. But then.... there still exists that pesky word: Maybe.

Then again............. it is only a word.

Kinda like...
Defeat: The means through which our victories over them, bring us to Him.

And just like that I redefined a word that Encarta would have me believe meant failure. And it's through that redefinition that I came to understand that there is no real defeat in Christ. Not really. Though there seems to exist those fragments of life that feel an awful lot like it, defeat does not equate with failure. True... words like misery, diminishment, and solitude exist separately in each. But the volume at which we suffer is decided by how we choose to respond.

Which brings us to another word. The answer to "How?".
Valiantly.

Because when words like defeat loom over us, as ominous clouds in the sky sometimes do, there must also be those such as these:

Survival.
Resolve.
Defiance.
Recover.


Hope.


Without them… evasion, retreat, and eventual surrender take over and leave you empty; a blackened cloud without the sweet release of precipitation.


Because even in HIS moment of defeat, pleading that the cup be lifted from Him, feeling complete abandonment from HIS Father in Heaven, He suffered valiantly for a greater good.... and was willingly lifted on the cross on a hill in what I imagine, was dripping with a glorious rain.

What else can I say but, "Bring the rain!

...........and then give me a chance to see the sun with new eyes... His eyes."

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And if none of that helps you, when you find yourself in a similar situation, repeating the following works too:

I am not yet as Job. I am not yet as Job. I am not yet as Job. :)