Sometimes you're simply wearing the wrong armor

​Yesterday, I wrote about the truth that a lot of us fail to defeat our giants because we live with a belief our giants are too big. Another reason we fail to defeat them is because we try to fight them as someone else and not ourselves.

In the story of David and Goliath, before David takes on the giant, King Saul tried to outfit David in the king's armor.

"Then Saul outfitted David as a soldier in armor. He put his bronze helmet on his head and belted his sword on him over the armor. David tried to walk but he could hardly budge."

Can you imagine? You're a teenage shepherd boy standing there in the king's armor. Surely, out there in the fields on those lonely nights, just a teenage boy and his sheep, David had dreamt of this moment.

But with wisdom well beyond teenage years, David realizes this isn't me.

"David told Saul, 'I can’t even move with all this stuff on me. I’m not used to this.' And he took it all off. Then David took his shepherd’s staff, selected five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in the pocket of his shepherd’s pack, and with his sling in his hand approached Goliath."

How many of us are trying to fight life someone else's way?

Several years ago, I took off a lot of armor in my life. Threw that bronze helmet to the ground. Put down the sword and picked up a pen. And I started writing about life as me.

I started writing about things I wanted to write about. In many instances things I NEEDED to write about. And I threw away any desire to write about things I thought people might desire to read. Things they might applaud.

I started writing about things that came across my heart and mind and soul, and stopped screening every word through the lens of protecting everyone else's.

I started writing as me and not a writer flirting with the idea of me.

There's a lot of us doing that, you know. Fighting our giants with the idea we have of ourselves while trying to live up to the reality others are trying to create in us. We're going into fights wearing the armor others have fitted us with while living a life fighting the truth that so little of what they've fitted us with actually fits.

God fitted me with writing long ago. And he gave me my own pen with which to do it.

I don't have C.S Lewis' pen. I love his pen, but it's not mine.

I can't write to please others; that robs me of all the pleasure and healing I get from writing for me.

I can't use my writing to fight others when I have too much fighting left to do fighting for me. Fighting to become the me God created me to be, and that doesn't always look like a me others think I should be.

It often requires me to wear my own armor and not someone else's.

What armor are you continuing to wear even though you fully know it doesn't fit? What giants are defeating you day in and day out because you're continuing to fight them as someone other than who you were created to be?

Maybe the real you is bigger than you think. And maybe the giants in your life are smaller than you've been imagining.

Maybe today take off the armor you've been fitted with and put on your own armor. Delight in how much better it fits.

Then go tackle your giants.