{"id":203,"date":"2026-04-15T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T10:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=203"},"modified":"2026-04-14T22:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T03:04:16","slug":"the-wrong-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/04\/15\/the-wrong-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wrong Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- POST TITLE: The Wrong Fight | Week 4 | Statement 4 | Wednesday -->\n<style>\n@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@400;600;700&family=Lato:ital,wght@0,300;0,400;0,700;1,300;1,400&display=swap');\n.su-wrap{--stone:#4A4A4A;--ash:#F0EDE8;--gold:#C9933A;--shadow:#1C1C1C;font-family:'Lato',sans-serif;color:var(--stone);max-width:700px;margin:0 auto;padding:2rem 1.5rem;line-height:1.8;font-size:1rem}\n.su-tag{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.65rem;letter-spacing:.25em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--gold);margin-bottom:.4rem}\n.su-sub{font-family:'Lato',sans-serif;font-size:.85rem;font-weight:300;color:var(--stone);margin-bottom:2rem;letter-spacing:.03em}\n.su-verse{border-left:3px solid var(--gold);background:#f2ede5;padding:1.25rem 1.5rem;margin:1.75rem 0;font-style:italic;font-size:1.1rem;color:var(--shadow);line-height:1.6}\n.su-verse cite{display:block;font-style:normal;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.7rem;letter-spacing:.15em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--gold);margin-top:.5rem}\n.su-beat{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.65rem;letter-spacing:.25em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--gold);margin:2rem 0 .4rem}\nhr.su-rule{border:none;border-top:1px solid #ddd;margin:1.75rem 0}\n.su-callout{background:var(--shadow);color:var(--ash);padding:1.5rem 1.75rem;margin:2rem 0}\n.su-callout .su-beat{color:var(--gold);margin-top:0}\n.su-callout p{margin:.4rem 0 0;line-height:1.65;font-size:1rem}\n.su-foot{font-size:.72rem;color:#bbb;margin-top:2rem;padding-top:1rem;border-top:1px solid #eee;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;letter-spacing:.12em;text-transform:uppercase}\np{margin:0 0 1.1rem}\n<\/style>\n<div class=\"su-wrap\">\n  <p class=\"su-tag\">Seven Statements from the Cross &bull; Week 4 &bull; Wednesday<\/p>\n  <p class=\"su-sub\">Statement IV &bull; Matthew 27:45-46 &bull; Tom, late 50s, son of a father with dementia<\/p>\n\n  <div class=\"su-verse\">\n    &#8220;Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.&#8221;\n    <cite>&mdash; Psalm 62:8 (ESV)<\/cite>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <p class=\"su-beat\">The Setup<\/p>\n  <p>Tom is in his late 50s. His father, a man who built things with his hands, who coached his little league team, who called every Sunday without fail for forty years, stopped recognizing him consistently about three months ago. Not every visit. Some days his dad is still in there, sharp and warm and present. Other days a stranger looks back at Tom from his father&#8217;s chair and calls him by the wrong name. Tom drives home from those visits and does not know what to do with what is happening to him. His father is still alive. He is also, in a way that has no clean language, already gone.<\/p>\n\n  <p class=\"su-beat\">The Crossroads Moment<\/p>\n  <p>What Tom is doing with the grief is picking fights with his brother about the care arrangement. Who is visiting enough. Who called the doctor last. Who is carrying the heavier load. The arguments are specific and detailed and feel urgent in the moment. Tom knows, in the quiet after each one, that he is not really fighting about the care schedule. He is fighting because grief needs somewhere to go and his brother is there. The real question living in Tom&#8217;s chest has nothing to do with visit frequency. It is: why is God taking his father this way, slowly, piece by piece, so there is nothing left to say goodbye to when the end actually comes? That question has never been spoken out loud. It has just been converted into logistics arguments that are slowly fracturing a sibling relationship that his father would not recognize if he could.<\/p>\n\n  <p class=\"su-beat\">What Jesus Did<\/p>\n  <p>From the cross, Jesus poured his darkest question directly to God. Not to the crowd. Not to the disciples. He did not distribute it among the people standing around him hoping someone would absorb enough of it to make it manageable. He aimed it at the one address that is actually a refuge. Psalm 62:8 says to pour out our hearts before him, that word pour is not polite language. It is full-weight, unfiltered, everything-on-the-table language. God can receive what Tom is carrying. His brother cannot. The care schedule is not the problem. The grief is the problem. And it needs to go somewhere that can actually hold it.<\/p>\n\n  <p class=\"su-beat\">The Choice and Outcome<\/p>\n  <p>Tom is driving home from a visit where his father called him by his uncle&#8217;s name for the entire hour. He pulls off the road before he gets to the highway and sits in the car and says out loud, to no one visible, to God, everything he has been converting into sibling arguments for three months. The real version. Why are you doing this this way. Why does it have to be slow. Why does he have to lose his dignity before he loses his life. He does not get an answer. He gets something quieter than an answer. He gets enough to drive home. He calls his brother that night and apologizes for the last two arguments. His brother, who has been grieving the same thing with nowhere to put it, starts to cry on the phone. They talk for an hour about their father. Not the care schedule. Their father. The house that had been cracking under the weight of misdirected pain begins, quietly, to hold.<\/p>\n\n  <div class=\"su-callout\">\n    <p class=\"su-beat\">The Lesson<\/p>\n    <p>The flesh converts grief into grievances because grievances have targets and grief does not. The Spirit learns to pour the real question out to God and stops sending the bill to the people who are standing nearest. Aim your hard questions at God, not at people, because the fight we are picking is almost never the one we are actually in.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n\n  <p class=\"su-foot\">stumbleup.me &bull; #StumbleUp &bull; #SevenStatements &bull; #AimUpward<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seven Statements from the Cross &bull; Week 4 &bull; Wednesday Statement IV &bull; Matthew 27:45-46 &bull; Tom, late 50s, son of a father with dementia &#8220;Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-burden"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SU_20260415_BLOG.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}