Sometimes a person faces a challenge alone with plenty of preparation. Thusly comes commandment four in Exo. 20:8—11: “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.” The Sabbath is God's training plan for eternity, for the challenges of the mortal and immortal life, and believers may practice the Sabbath independently of mortal mentors. There are common win-or-lose challenges in the mortal life. One situation is where an adult person loses control of his or her bodily functions and may get injured. I could use as examples emotional outbreaks (such as tantrums, grandstanding, crying in fear, desire, sadness, and/or anger) or mental breakdowns and severe (extremely uncontrollable) mood swings; loss of focus while driving or working, physical breakdowns such as heart attacks, seizures; aneurisms; strokes; vomiting; fainting; sweating; shivering; defecating (or diarrhea); bedwetting (urination); falling to the ground (stumbling, tripping) unpredictably, uncontrollably, itches; and fight/flight responses as reflex reactions. Victory would be to maintain control and normal bodily function in the face of adversity, such as Covid-19 or old age, or regain normal bodily function without anyone else's help after losing control. Defeat would be to lose control of normal bodily function and require help to regain control. This above-written list is only a small sample of common challenges of the mortal life. The challenge could be worse if one loses control of normal bodily function without anyone to help regain control when the same person needs and seeks help. Help may not be conveniently available for regaining control of normal bodily function. What happens when adults cannot rely on others to help when needed? Instances may occur again over a person's adolescent and adult lifetime for losing control, and, in this case, such a person would need to get help unless he or she is not also incapacitated at the time. One may not have the convenience of a nearby hospital, pharmacy, retail outlet, gas station, rest room, emergency clinic, or convalescent center handy when the need for help with regaining control happens (and a change/wash of clothes). One may not have the convenience of proper comfort and care nearby when the need arises. Help from other mortals is not always there when the need for help arises, when the need for knowledge, skill, wisdom, and material resources (comfort, food, shelter, clothes, sanitation, medicine, medical and preventive care, money, transportation, etc., etc.) becomes realized. Mortals cannot always expect other mortals to hear and respond to the cry for help. As examples, there are drowning victims, or shipwrecked passengers, chronic unemployment from the Covid-19 pandemic, and stranded victims of car accidents. Hopefully, either there is someone mortal to intervene, or God must intervene. Sometimes, the challenge demands that only God can intervene. There are always challenges where only God can intervene to save the day and applies to the basic lessons of the Christian faith. My first metaphor is about living and learning as a Christian despite unexpected emergencies, despite the propensity of the flesh to sin, ignorantly or otherwise. My first metaphor is about living by faith in God's grace and by God's commandments with the challenges and temptations of the mortal life, emergencies or not. All mortal believers occasionally neglect to remember and apply their basic, first lessons in the faith (i.e. the Ten Commandments) until after stumbling into sin and temptation again. Therefore, a mortal believer may occasionally soil him or herself with sin when heavily burdened with the cares of the mortal life. Who would help a believer to recover to his or her feet in the struggle of life against sin? How would such a believer find grace and rejoin the race? The struggle with sin, ignorance, forgetfulness, and the temptation to sin for the believer continues ongoing during mortal life until the flesh perishes from earth. A Christian cannot ever afford to forget his or her first, basic lessons about sin and forgiveness, about God's laws and grace, especially if no one else (no one mortal) cares nor is available to help with recovery. Any stumbling Christian, just as a newborn infant or elderly, deteriorating person, must learn to fend for him or herself against sin and Satan throughout mortal life when no one mortal is available to help. Christians must learn to maintain themselves, get back into the competition against the flesh and Satan, and live penitently always. My first metaphor helps my readers to understand how sin and temptation are a constant struggle in the mortal life. No mortal nor holy angel is exempt from the temptation to sin. Suffering the temptation to sin while struggling with adversity is the demand of the mortal life, and God makes the provision of training His children for eternity with the fourth commandment.

In the clearing stands a boxer, And a fighter by his trade And he carries the reminders Of ev'ry glove that laid him down And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
 "I am leaving, I am leaving." But the fighter still remains -Paul Simon I Am Leaving, I Am Leaving Grandaddy's not dead yet, but I cried on the way home from my visit with him today. Mom and her sisters have been going over there for months, ever since Grandmother got sick with pneumonia. She died in the hospital on Thanksgiving day, just moments before we all sat down to dinner. Grandaddy didn't want to go to the hospital to see her. He hasn't been much of anywhere in months, scarcely even out to the back yard. When Mom told him Grandmother was gone, he cried and cried — strange since they hardly ever talked to each other, moving about the same house like ghosts. At the news of his wife's death, Grandaddy declared in his slow, measured way, “I guess I won't be around much longer.” Then, he attended to practical matters, asking if we should clean out Grandmother's office. In My Fear and My Shame I only recently started going to visit him regularly. When Mom and my aunts asked for help in caring for my grandparents, I didn't want to do it. I was busy with kids, volunteer work, and writing, but also, I was afraid. It seemed unnatural to care for my grandparents like they were children — Have you taken your pills? Take just a few more bites of your lunch. But at the age of 38, I knew if I didn't, I'd regret it. So Grandaddy and I talk, I fix him breakfast, make sure he takes his pills and insulin. I check his legs, which look worse and worse with sores and swelling. I wash the dishes and clean up mounds of empty artificial sweetener packets. I sweep the floor, so Mom won't have to do it in the evening. It makes her feel better to know it's clean over there. He Carries the Reminders When I sit by Grandaddy as he eats, if I'm quiet, he will tell me things. He was an only child. Every child ought to have a sibling. He was in World War II as a radio operator. He went to Japan but missed most of the action. He was glad to come home and never felt the need to travel after that. He met my grandmother and married her sixty-three years ago in 1950, just a year before my mom, their first child, was born. He gets a pension from AT&T. He worked there for years, starting back when it was Bell Telephone and was enticed into early retirement in his fifties. Grandaddy's always been interested in the Bermuda Triangle. I read some of his books on it once. He mentions episodes of planes disappearing off the coast of Florida, even though we're talking about golf. A Fighter By Her Trade My grandfather is a loner. He is a quiet man who often took a back seat to the limelight my grandmother commanded. From women's rights to protesting the Vietnam War, she fought. She'd argue about politics just as easily as about the price of lettuce. She was, in many forms, a fighter. 
 If you want to talk to Grandaddy, you sit down next to him and wait. If no one interrupts, he'll probably tell you something. There are long, pleasant silences. Grandaddy told me the other day, “I guess I'm not real bright,” but that's just because he doesn't talk all day like Grandmother and the rest of us. Cut Him Til He Cried Out I don't know my grandfather as well as some. But he seems sad. Grandaddy says he's lived too long. But I see — even at eighty-nine, with diabetes, swollen legs and a hint of dementia — a spark. When he talks to me, he knows who I am. He doesn't ask small-talk questions, but he likes to chat if the subject matter suits him. 
I have realized I see his sadness and his introverted ways in myself. I feel his depression in me. And so I cried for the life he may have lived differently and for the imbalance of chemicals in his body that disallows his happiness. I cried for fear of what I will become as I age. And I cried for the loss of anchor I feel with all but one of my grandparents gone. Grandaddy always smiles at me quietly and thanks me genuinely when I leave. His loneliness is palpable. Maybe that loneliness gets us all in the end. He says, “I'm eighty-nine years old. I'll be ninety on my birthday if I make it that long.” Still Remains I don't know why he's still here. Maybe visits from his family are enough. Or maybe he simply doesn't have the energy to be anything else. He doesn't believe in an afterlife; perhaps life in any form is preferable to none. Or maybe even at eight-nine years old with his wife gone, heart problems, breathing trouble, rotting legs, and mental health issues — he still has hope against reason things will get better. Maybe I got that from him, too — a little hope and trust and a serious dose of perseverance. And maybe, even though we don't protest the loudest, we are quiet fighters in our own rights.