This is How I Fight My Battles
There is so much in that book about courage, obedience, leadership, remembering what God has done, and moving forward into what He has promised.
But one of the biggest things I keep coming back to is this:
Joshua did not win the Promised Land because he was some brilliant military strategist.
He won because he learned to seek God for the battle plan.
Then obey the battle plan.
Then remember God in the victory.
Then seek Him again before the next battle.
And sometimes, before God ever gave him a battle plan, He dealt with something deeper.
He dealt with His people.
Before Israel marched around Jericho, before the walls fell, before Joshua led them into that first major battle in the Promised Land, God stopped everything and renewed the covenant through circumcision.
They had crossed the Jordan.
The battle was waiting.
And God essentially said:
First, we deal with who you are and whose you are.
Joshua 5 says:
“Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.”
— Joshua 5:9
Before strategy or victory came consecration and alignment.
Before God told them how to fight, He reminded them that they belonged to Him.
I have been fighting a battle for several weeks.
Or, more accurately, Wyatt has.
And for a while, I was fighting the wrong one.
Wyatt has a unique collection of medical conditions that are not ultimately life-threatening, but absolutely affect his ability to live everyday life at full strength.
He has severe ADHD with impulsivity and emotional dysregulation. He also has a bundle branch block in his heart and a red blood cell disorder called elliptocytosis.
So in addition to managing ADHD, we monitor things like iron, hydration, blood pressure, and energy.
Most of the time, we know the rhythm. We have lived with this for years. We know what ADHD struggles can look like. We know what helps. We know what tends to happen when things start sliding. And that may actually be part of why I missed what was happening.
Because the symptoms looked familiar. His schoolwork started slipping. His room became a disaster. Emotions were all over the place. Assignments were missing. Motivation disappeared. He was harder to redirect. His behavior became more difficult.
So I responded to what I thought I knew. If this was an ADHD crisis, then structure mattered.
Accountability mattered.
Checking the agenda mattered.
Consequences mattered.
Getting teachers involved mattered.
Staying on top of assignments mattered.
None of those things were inherently wrong.
They were just not enough for the battle he was actually fighting.
Because while I was looking at executive dysfunction and behavior, his body was becoming more and more depleted. It started with afternoon naps. Then the naps became harder to wake him from. Then he started sleeping through things he normally loves.
Cousin time. Youth group. Noise. Chaos. Fun.
Things Wyatt does not typically sleep through.
And still, for a while, I pushed harder. I fussed more. I tightened the expectations. I took away enjoyable activities. I sympathized with frustrated teachers. And in one of my least proud moments, I called him lazy.... Irresponsible.
Those words hurt to write now.
Because the truth was, I was requiring more and more from someone who had less and less to give.
And do you know how my battle strategy worked? It did not.
Everything got worse. His behavior spiraled. His schoolwork declined. His grades fell. The second quarter started worse than the first one ended. The whole house became frustrated.
I became more aware of how incapable I felt of managing him.
And somewhere in all of that, I was fighting so hard to fix what I thought was happening that I had not stopped long enough to ask whether this was actually the same battle we had fought before.
That may be one of the biggest things Joshua teaches me.
God did not give Joshua one strategy and say: Use this every time.
Jericho had one plan.
Ai had another.
Other battles had different instructions.
The constant was never the method... The constant was God.
We can know the battle well enough to become overconfident in the strategy.
We can say:
I have seen this before.
I know what this is.
I know what works.
And sometimes we do know.
But sometimes we are fighting yesterday’s battle with yesterday’s strategy.
And the outward symptoms can look very similar while the real problem underneath is completely different.
Finally, in desperation, I reached out to Wyatt’s pediatrician and said: Something feels off. Maybe this is not just ADHD. Maybe something else is happening.
He ordered bloodwork. And as soon as I considered the possibility, I did what I always do.
I went into action. I picked Wyatt up from school and took him straight to the lab.
We were going to get answers. We were going to get numbers. We were going to figure out what needed fixing.
Except Wyatt hates needles. Not dislikes them. HATES them.
So there I was, holding my needle-terrified child with my arm across his chest, holding the back of the chair he was sitting in like a seatbelt while three nurses tried to talk him through getting blood drawn.
And right in the middle of all of his screaming, crying, and protesting loud enough for the entire laboratory to hear, he cried:
“Mom, we haven’t even prayed yet.”
👀😭
And there it was.
My Jericho-before-Jericho moment.
My reminder that before strategy, before action, before answers, before fixing…
we needed to remember Who was actually in command and seek Him for the next right thing to do.
I immediately started praying out loud over him. And while I prayed for God to calm him, help those nurses, and let us get the blood we needed, something changed in me too.
Nothing in Wyatt’s body changed in that moment. We still did not know the lab results. His iron stores were still depleted. His blood still needed to be drawn. We still had medical decisions ahead. We still had school issues to address. We still had work to do.
But my battle changed. The victory began before the numbers came back. Because the frustration left. The need to fix him broke.
The battle stopped being me versus Wyatt’s behavior and became us standing with Wyatt while God led us through what was actually happening.
That is a very different fight.
The lab results eventually confirmed what I had begun to suspect. His iron stores were severely depleted. He was anemic and trending downward. He was not simply refusing to function well. His body was struggling to keep up. He was tired because he was tired. He was overwhelmed because everything was harder. And underneath all of that was the ADHD that already makes executive functioning difficult on a good day. Medically, he is not in a life-threatening crisis. But physically and mentally, he has been fighting every day just to wake up and function like everyone expects him to. And on top of that, he had been carrying the weight of everyone’s disappointment and frustration.
Including mine.
Oh, how I wished I could take back the last month and a half.
But I cannot. So I apologized. And then we changed the battle plan with prayer.
That made me think about Joshua and the Battle of Ai.
Israel had just experienced this enormous victory at Jericho. Then they went into Ai assuming they knew what to do. They did not seek the Lord first. And they lost.
There was something in the camp that had to be dealt with. Joshua had to go back to God. There had to be repentance. There had to be reassessment. And God gave a new strategy.
Joshua 8 begins:
“Then the Lord said to Joshua, ‘Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged…’”
— Joshua 8:1
Same people. Same leader. Different battle. Different strategy.
Prayer in that laboratory felt like that kind of reset for me.
Not because prayer meant we suddenly stopped doing practical things.
Actually, the opposite.
Prayer finally put the practical things back in their proper place.
It moved me from:
How do I fix this? to: Lord, what is the next right thing?
We ended the weekend in prayer. We started Monday morning in prayer.
We contacted the pediatrician again and asked for the next medical step.
We ordered the iron supplement needed for a depleted season instead of relying only on the daily maintenance routine.
We reached out to his teachers and advocated for him, making sure his 504 accommodations are being followed while several diagnoses are overlapping into one perfect storm.
The strategy changed. Not because discipline is suddenly wrong. Not because expectations disappeared. Not because schoolwork no longer matters.
But because I finally stopped trying to win the wrong battle.
I thought I was fighting laziness, irresponsibility, and poor habits.
Some of those things may still need attention along the way.
But underneath all of that was a kid whose body was depleted and whose brain was already working overtime.
I was trying to correct what first needed care.
That is a different battle plan.
Proverbs says:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
— Proverbs 3:5
I know that verse. I have quoted that verse. I have taught that verse.
Apparently, I still need that verse. Because my own understanding said:
Push harder.
Require more.
Increase consequences.
Fix the behavior.
But God’s wisdom said:
Look again.
Ask.
Pray.
Pay attention.
Advocate.
Help.
And maybe that is the whole Joshua pattern.
Get right with God.
Seek Him for the strategy.
Obey the strategy.
Put your boots on the ground.
Remember Who gave the victory.
And before the next battle, seek Him again.
Because Joshua did not fight one battle and retire.
He spent the rest of his life taking territory.
Battle after battle. City after city.
Joshua 10 says:
“Joshua subdued the whole region… because the Lord, the God of Israel, fought for Israel.”
— Joshua 10:42
Joshua absolutely fought. He led troops. He marched. He made decisions. He took action. He had boots on the ground.
But Scripture still says:
The Lord fought for Israel.
That is the tension I need to remember.
Faith does not mean inactivity.
Trusting God does not mean refusing medical care.
It does not mean neglecting schoolwork.
It does not mean failing to parent.
It does not mean sitting still while everything falls apart and calling it faith.
Joshua still had to move, command, direct, and fight!
But all of it came under the direction of God.
And even at the end of Joshua’s life, after decades of conquest, the work was not completely finished. Joshua was 110 years old when he died. He had spent his entire life essentially fighting battle after battle, and there were still places Israel had not fully taken.
Yet before his death, Joshua told them:
“The Lord your God Himself will push them out for your sake. He will drive them out before you…”
— Joshua 23:5
Even when Joshua would no longer be there to lead them, God would still be fighting for them!
There will always be another battle.
There will be another hard parenting season.
Another medical issue.
Another school problem.
Another relationship struggle.
Another place where I do not know what to do.
I am never going to become so good at life that I graduate from needing God’s strategy.
And someday, Wyatt will fight his battles without me by his side..... And maybe that is the point. What will he remember about how we fought his battles?
Victory was never supposed to make us independent of God.
Every victory was supposed to make us remember God.
I cannot fix Wyatt. And honestly, I do not think that is even the right language anymore.
Because Wyatt is not a broken project I have been assigned to repair.
He is my son.
He has a body with real limitations. A brain that works differently. A personality God created on purpose. And a life that will require him to learn how to steward all of those things well.
My job is not to make him identical to everybody else. My job is to help him learn how to walk faithfully in the body, brain, strengths, weaknesses, and story God gave him. My job is to remind Him of what God has already done and teach him how to fight our battles! (and sometimes... let him teach me!)
Above all of that, I want his identity rooted deeper than any diagnosis.
Not ADHD. Not anemia. Not a heart condition. Not grades. Not missing assignments. Not the opinions of frustrated adults.
Jesus.... Just Jesus!
That is where his strength has to come from. And mine too.
I get aligned with Him before I ask Him to bless my strategy: seek Him first, listen and obey.
I put my boots on the ground where He tells me to stand. I repent and realign when I realize I have been fighting the wrong battle.
I remember and testify Who gave the victory.
And when the next battle comes, I go back to Him again.
This is how we fight our battles!
Where might you be fighting today’s battle with yesterday’s strategy — and what could change if you stopped long enough to seek God before taking the next step?
Lord, forgive me for the times I rush into battle with my own understanding and ask You to bless my strategy afterward. Before I fight, bring me back into alignment with You. Help me recognize when I am fighting the wrong battle, and give me humility to change course when You show me something I could not see before. Teach me to seek You, obey You, move when You say move, and remember that every victory ultimately belongs to You. Help me care for the people I love with wisdom, grace, and truth, and remind me that You are fighting for us even when the battle is not finished yet. Amen.
Until next time, keep following the Plott, and I will be praying for us all. 💛
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