the long walk before a fight.

I grew up in a small town among a blue collar lower economic crowd. Very few places have influenced me so irreversibly like this small piece of land running along the shores of lake Texoma. Like a bad country song would rightly inform you, I learned everything I know back in those sticks. That includes fighting. While I was never the best at it, there was a necessity to knowing how to do it well enough to avoid its reoccurring presence in your life.

I learned early on that some fights cannot be avoided.

Not to mention that some fights limit future fights from taking place. This was never made more clear to me than on the legendary piece of real estate called “the playground” in elementary school. Its funny that for an space set apart for “playing” we sure did do a lot of “fighting.” It wouldn’t take much to really set things in motion. And once they were in motion it was just a matter of time. Soon camps would form for each combatant and the space between them would need to be narrowed. If you found yourself on the far side of the playground you had to walk the long distance to the place where the showdown was to take place. If scenes from Tombstone are coming to mind then you are on the right track. In Kingston, most fights took place behind a poorly thought out wall on the far side of the playground. It blinded teachers to workings of our adolescent fight club. What I remember most about those fights was not the few seconds of combat, but instead the long walk. The fight was a flash, but the walk was eternity squared. This walk is not terribly unlike the way a boxer or MMA fighter will stroll into the ring... minus the theme music I guess. It is a tense time of thinking over all the things that might happen. It is a place in between leaving your corner of the playground and making the long walk over to a place where you know there is a fight waiting for you. You are not back safe among the swing sets, and yet, you are not quite to the place where blows will actually be thrown either. No, you are in the agonizing place in between. The long walk to a fight can be a stroll through hell. It is hard to keep cool when so much adrenaline is flowing, and it is hard to stay brave when there are so many things waiting for you that you may not be ready for. This is what makes the long walk maybe more difficult than the actual fight. The monsters in your head are way worse than the ones actually under your bed.

The long walk to the fight needs its own dose of courage.

If you will allow me to say so, this has kind of been what it has been like for our family for the last few months. We have left home and hearth in Oklahoma for a Virginia we hardly knew. We parted with possessions that we thought we would never lose. Something we learned is that one does not know how greedy and covetous they are until they actually sell all of their stuff and go follow Jesus. We discovered all kinds of crazy idolatry in our hearts when we were so slow to sell a bunch of stuff. It was like we formed some kind of weird mystical connection to a bunch of trinkets all in the name of “sentimental value.” There has been a lot of sin come to the surface in our lives as we tried to let go of some things. This was no doubt the Lord’s doing and we thank Him for graciously exposing us. We left these things, but harder even than that was the leaving of our people. We have a community/tribe/family in Oklahoma that is absolutely priceless to us. Men and women who we have done life with, cried with, prayed with, laughed with/at, and would gladly give our lives for. We have been a part of something special. There just simply are not the words to do it justice. They mean too much. I am not sure yet why, but I have this feeling it is for their benefit that I am being removed from their good company for a season. We do not doubt that the Lord will tend these, His very own sheep, with or without the Corsauts present. He is good like that. We could go on to mention jobs, events, security, Taco Casa, and a hundred other things that we are saying a long good bye to as we get on a plane to go to a fight.

And, mind you, there is a fight coming.

We go to battle back the darkness with the light of the Christ that refuses to be denied. We know this will cost us. It will cost our family. But we also know that it is worth it in ways beyond what we can right now grasp. Right now we are in the long walk across the playground to the fight and it seems like its own form of torture. In this space between going and arriving, we feel a heartfelt sadness leaving the ones we love so much. We are slowly mourning all the things we are going to miss and people we may never see again this side of heaven or facebook. I would be lying if I said it was not hard. It is hard beyond all possible strength, but His. We know it comes in waves and we are just trying to weather this season of life by leaning on the solid rock who never fails. I do not know if you heard, but He has a long track record.
The walk is not the fight, but there is a fortitude needed to make sure the fight does not end before you even get there. A resolve to not stop putting one foot in front of the other until you stand face to face with your adversary. We have punches that are going to be thrown and battles that are going to ensue, but for now we just have to muster enough courage to keep walking until we find ourselves in a Paris not located in Texas. Like I said before, some fights cannot be avoided. There are things that the Lord has intended for us to get mixed up in and it would be a shame not to jump in wouldn’t it? It would be a shame to fight the good fight just because we are afraid of a long walk or giving up some possessions that we can not take with us anyway. Things have been set in motion. We see that now. We do not want to cower from the moment or back down from a good fight. We may not be the best at it, but we find ourselves ready to do what needs to be done and thus we are mid stride on a long walk. It is just a matter of time for all of us who would aim to follow Jesus seriously and let the gospel be the banner we fly over our lives. Its about that time. We have no theme music or hype man, but what we do have is a long walk. After that, who knows?