I know God is in control and has a plan. But, sometimes I wish he’d call a huddle.

These are the moments when I lose the battle every single day. I try to start the day by reading the Bible. OK, that’s done. I know I have to put a kid’s lunch together. Done. Now what? Through groggy, sleep-filled eyes, there are no trains of thought running this early. The trains that ran the night before leave not even a fading trail of coal smoke on the horizon. No clue as to where they came or where they’ve gone. After the cleansing of sleep, I fail to remember the velvet walls of the train cars, the plush seats or the passing countryside through the windows.

To have a train this early, I will need to build it and the rails on which it will ride from the uneven, predawn ground where I stand, confused. I feel as uncertain as the unformed Earth, anticipating the voice of God commanding light. If only the voice could provide it. Searching I find no semblance of recognition. No guideposts, no landmark, no geologic features to jog my memory. If only I had left myself a clue, or better yet, a train, with tracks, pointing toward my daily goals. There are noises around me, clanking of armor, anxious footprints, I am surrounded by an invisible enemy in the morning darkness. As it were, I go back to bed so I can bolt awake after hours lost, scolding myself, as though a different person, that I failed to follow simple instructions.

These are the moments when the enemy wins. These are moral defeats that drive me further from the front lines of my goals. Once the sun has risen, I see how far the enemy has driven me. Far in the distance are the mountains of my expectations. Success in business slips below the horizon. Family continuity is surrounded by a hostile force. The summit of completing a novel slips so terribly far every day. And exercise? Who can find the time with enemies at the gate? The fight is real, defeat is at hand, and each day paints a drab picture of the lackluster and inefficient life that drones on.

Only now, in the brightness of midday, should I realize the struggle is not external. The battle is truly one of self. An outsider looking on would see me punching myself in a parking lot, complaining that I cannot possess the strength to withstand such force when I myself am the force. If my power were pointed toward an actual goal without both of my hands holding me back in confusion, the “enemy” that I fight and fear would turn with me to my goals. We are one, my enemy and I, the very same skin, bones and blood, conflicted and in civil turmoil.

Why do we all fight ourselves daily? Why can we not muster our strength into a single armament, a single weapon, a single goal? I am no psychologist, prophet or sage. But for me one common denominator is clear. In the darkness surrounding me with sleep still lingering, I am lost. As with any sound in the darkness, the mind assumes the worst. The shuffling of feet and the clanking of armor, though, are not an army waiting to devour me but the hordes wearing my own uniforms and emblems, waiting for orders to ascend the peaks and take ground. But instead follow me intently, sure of my command, when I retreat from them, their sounds persuading me to retreat faster instead of rushing onward.