I’ve seen both my parents break up fights. (And no, they were not fights between my sister and me. My little sister Becky could whoop me by the time she was about nine.)

When I was in elementary school, I would walk with my mom over the hill between the middle school and the high school where she taught after school each day. One day, a couple high school boys were slugging it out, fighting at the top of that hill. The hair stood up on my neck as soon as I saw them. I was thinking we needed to walk the other direction and hide in the office.

“HEY!” my mom’s voice exploded up the hill. I shrunk back, my eyes wide– I was sure those two boys were about to be dead, just from the tone of her voice. They stopped fighting and bent over to catch their breath. If I had any breath in my ribcage, I would have yelled for them to run for it.

Mom jogged up and dragged them down to the office. They went with her in peace. Of course they did.

Many years later, when my dad and I taught at the same high school, there was a fight in the hallway outside the library. The usual crowd had gathered to stare. Without hesitation, he marched forward and threw himself into the middle of a mass of horomonal, irrational fists and emerged with two red-faced boys walking in front of him to the office, heads down and sputtering.

My parents have always been giants in my world, probably because I regularly witnessed them doing things like breaking up fights. My mom’s having a surgery this weekend to help her lungs work better. It’s a different kind of fight, but there she is, texting me from the hospital that all is good, like she’s having a pedicure done instead of having her arteries opened. Tra-la-la. She’s still doing hard things with faith and courage.

Saying a prayer today for whatever fight you are facing—for courage and peace. And if you think about it, say a prayer for my folks this weekend. Thanks, friends.