A man sat in a hospital bed with a decision to make about his future. He had just had a “cardiac incident” and was going to need heart surgery. This was not a surprise, he knew growing up that his heart condition would mean surgery in the future, and he knew for about two weeks prior to the incident that the time was close. This decision was not the decision, there was no alternative here, surgery was the only option.

But there was a decision to make.

At one point during his hospital stay the doctor came in and said to him words that he has not forgotten to this day, words that he will never forget. The doctor said bluntly, “if you like life and you want to be around for a while you will stop drinking.”

The man made up his mind that he would quit drinking. When he was discharged from the hospital the nurses wanted to give the man information about groups that could help him but he told them he was all set, he didn’t need outside help. He could see the nurses were upset as they wished him good luck. He was determined to fight this battle silently.

The man had stopped drinking for two weeks when the first real challenge arrived. He had to go on a work-related trip with a coworker from another company. Well, the plane was delayed and the other man said, “let’s go to the bar and have a couple of drinks while we wait.” The man still didn’t have the courage to tell people he wasn’t drinking anymore, so he went to the bar.

His coworker ordered a drink, and right up until the moment the bartender asked what he wanted he didn’t know what he was going to order. Would it be a beer or a ginger ale? He opened his mouth and ordered a beer. It was probably the best tasting beer he ever had, and he promised himself and God that when this trip was over he would stop drinking for good.

As if that temptation wasn’t enough, they got to the hotel and for the one and only time in his life the hotel where they were staying had free beer in the lobby for all who were staying there. This really wasn’t fair! He was too weak to resist this temptation and he drank after work every night during the trip, again promising himself and God he would quit when the trip was over.

The trip ended and on the drive home from the airport he stopped at the store and bought some non-alcoholic beer. That was almost seven years ago, and he has not had a drink since.

It isn’t always easy for him. Hanging out with family or friends, having a cookout, watching a game, or going to a concert, just ordinary activities can sometimes trigger the urge and he thinks that beer sounds almost too good to resist. Sometimes just the smell can make his mouth water. Sometimes people come up to him and say “one won’t hurt.” Those people are just trying to be friendly but they don’t understand that, yes, one can hurt if you’re the guy who can’t just have one. But every day it does get easier.

But he remembers the doctor’s words, and he asks God for strength. Plus, he feels so much better now that he will not give in. He was once ashamed, which is why he decided to fight the battle alone, but now he is proud of his achievement.

Every year when the anniversary of his victory over alcohol comes around he puts a quick post on Facebook commemorating the achievement, but last year he woke up at 2:00 AM with the thought that he needed to write more about it this time. He started piecing together in his sleepy mind a piece that he would call “Fighting the Silent Battles.” He thought it would be an inspirational post for anybody who is silently fighting any demon or ghost in their lives.

When he got up in the morning he started to think about how to go about it, it would be too long to write and edit on Facebook, so he decided he would visit his abandoned blog and write it there and then copy and paste it to Facebook. Or maybe publish it on the blog and post a link on Facebook.

In the morning he started to do a little research to see if somebody had already written an article on silent battles, maybe he could just share that, or even better, maybe there was a video on You Tube he could share. He didn’t find anything that morning so he went to work and that night he posted his usual yearly acknowledgement.

The post he was going to write would have gone something like this:

There are many people out there who are fighting silent battles, they are fighting them internally and alone. On the outside they look as if everything is okay but inside they are struggling to keep it together, sometimes they are struggling for their lives.

Maybe their battle is with alcohol, maybe it’s drugs, or depression and anxiety, or maybe it’s a financial burden. There are many things that people battle everyday that nobody knows about.

They have various reasons for keeping it inside; pride, arrogance, fear of rejection or ridicule, embarrassment, or maybe they don’t want to burden others with their problems. Maybe they don’t want others to worry about them, or maybe they are worried about money problems and they want to put on a strong front so their spouse will be spared from worrying also.

So they fight alone, but they are not really alone. You never really know what silent battles a person may or may not be fighting inside of himself, and if you are one of those people I am here to tell you that you can beat this because you are not really alone. Even if you don’t have somebody you think you can turn to, God is with you and you can always turn to Him. If you don’t know Him just reach out from the heart and ask Him for strength. He is sitting there waiting for the weak in spirit to turn to Him and He will carry you through.

Well, that was the gist of what he was going to write.

Not long after this he found out that there was somebody very close to his heart who could have used the words of encouragement he decided not to write that day and he was suddenly struck with the notion that he had ignored the still small voice of God. God wanted him to write that post for a reason, that is why He woke him up and started to put the words into his head. He promised God he would never ignore that little voice in the middle of the night again.

Since that time he has been awakened in the middle of the night three times. He decided he was going to start a new blog, but he was pretty nervous about it so he was taking his time getting it set up. He said he would not bring the blog live until it looked exactly the way he wanted it to. That was the truth, but it might have also been an excuse. The blog editor had changed quite a bit and he was having trouble getting everything to work properly. He almost had the site complete but there was one issue he couldn’t live with. He spent quite a bit of time with it over the next few days but couldn’t get it right.

He went to bed one night and suddenly he awoke at 1:00 in the morning and he heard “you should try it this way.” In the morning he grabbed a cup of coffee and within two minutes the problem was solved. It had to have been the still small voice of God. He joked that God wasn’t going to let him not do this.

Now the blog was set up, but he didn’t want to go live until he had some content on the blog for people to read. He looked over several articles he had drafted in the past and there were some good ideas there but he hated the writing. He found one in particular with a concept he really liked, but the writing was bad and he didn’t like the tone the writing took. The whole thing would need to be reworked.

He went to bed that night and he was awakened again, this time at 2:00 AM with the thought that he should turn the story into an allegory of a man who came to a crossroads in his life. There was no more sleep that night. The ideas kept coming to him that night and he would run from the bed to the den to write down the most important thoughts so he wouldn’t forget in the morning. The still small voice of God had spoken again so he rewrote the article and he launched the blog.

Now he was at a point where he had four ideas for articles started but he couldn’t figure out where to take them, how they were going to conclude, or which one he should concentrate on. When he went to bed he asked God for guidance. And, you guessed it, at 2:00 in the morning he woke up again with an idea rolling around in his head. The still small voice of God had spoken to him again.

But this time the man spoke back to the still small voice because this idea was not one of the four he had started. He said, “this isn’t one of the posts I was asking for guidance on, and I missed my opportunity to write this.”

The still small voice spoke into his ear and said, “you CAN still write this, you CAN add to it and amend it, and you WILL call it “A Silent Battle and a Still Small Voice.”

I said okay.

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