When we can't see the enemy, we will create one

​I've come to know this about many of the fights that are happening in our lives. Whether it be fights we see playing out in public, or the fights we don't see that are going on behind closed doors. Many of those fights have nothing to do with the fights taking place at the surface.

In fact, when two people in a relationship of any kind are in a fight, many times those two people themselves have no idea what the fight is about.

Because the real source of a fight, its real roots, is often hidden. Do you realize how hard it is to put out the flames of a fight, to bring peace, when even the fighters don't know what's fueling the fight?

It's hard.

Trust me, it's very hard.

Steven Furtick says, "you would rather create an enemy than deal with your insecurity."

He's right.

Creating enemies is also a great way to avoid dealing with fear, with shame, with guilt, with resentment. Often times, the things that have been left in the wake of challenging childhoods.

A wake so deep within us that it becomes a hidden fight.

The fight is not so hidden, though, that one doesn't feel the urge to fight. It's an enemy constantly begging for a fight from the shadows, without ever daring to come into the light to provide even a glimpse of the fighter.

And so we, accepting the fight, pick something in the light - or someone - and we make them the fight. For at least a moment, fighting something we see feels less confusing and daunting than fighting something we've never seen.

It's the nature of our traumas. They go into hiding initially to protect us. They feel like they are doing us a favor. They recognize we are in no position to handle them in that moment in a healthy way. They give us time knowing we will come back to them another day.

But if we don't go back to them, if they are left to hide, if no one ever recognizes them for what they are, wounds, then wounds become infections. Hidden infections, rendered untreatable only because no one is curious about, or remotely searching for the wounds.

The untreated wounds, over time, begin to feel like a fight. Only the fights rarely look like the wounds. How can they if no one has ever seen them? They are strangers even to the wounded.

So the wounds start to look like people.

Relationships.

Breaking and broken relationships.

And from the outside, people come to believe, and often judge, that breaking.

Something they really are ill-equipped to do.

Because the broken themselves, it's very rare that even the broken themselves know where the fighting came from. They got so busy thinking it was about them when it was always about the wounds.

The hidden wounds.

There is so much fighting going on in the world. So much breaking. I just wish as a starting point toward peace we'd all come to know that very little of the fighting is about the fights we see.

It's about the wounds.

The unseen wounds.