Internal Warfare Quotes

“It is not an external enemy we dread. Our foe is shut up within ourselves. An internal warfare is daily waged by us.”
― John Cassian, Making Life a Prayer: Selected Writings

“When my son Lowell was eight years old, one day he and I had just finished playing. Tired and exhausted, we were lying on the bed talking. He sat up in the bed and started to trace his finger over the scar behind my neck. He asked me with concern in his voice,
‘Daddy, how you got this cut behind your neck?’

I hesitated for a while, wondering how much I should tell him, or if I should even tell him at all. I decided to tell him some of it, leaving out the part about the shooting. So I told him,
‘I got that from fighting with one of my friends.’

Lowell didn’t respond right away. After a moment of silence and tracing his finger over the scar, my son said something to me that I had never even considered up to that point. He said,
‘Daddy, your friend tried to kill you!”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father